HarperCollins Workers Strike For Increased Wages, Benefits and Diversity – iNow

But with a salary of $56,000 a year, she said, she worries she won’t be able to stay.

“There’s a running joke in publishing that you have to have a rich partner to be able to make it in the industry,” she said. “That should be a thing of the past.”

A spokeswoman for HarperCollins declined to comment on contract negotiations, which have been going on since December 2021.

In a statement, the union said that its members, who were mostly women, earn an average of $55,000 per year, with a starting salary of $45,000. Many employees, it added, feel pressure to work long hours without any additional compensation.

The union, part of the U.A.W., represents more than 250 employees who work in the editorial, publicity, sales, design, marketing and legal departments. Employees at HarperCollins have been unionized for more than 80 years, the union said, calling it “one of the earliest unions of ‘white collar’ workers in the country.” The union is an outlier in the industry; most big corporate publishers do not have unionized workers.