NEW YORK – In a clear victory for academic publishing workers and the Guild at large, an impartial arbitrator ruled Sept. 8 that Oxford University Press improperly laid off 13 people in 2024, ordering the company to resolve the issue by November or face an additional order.
Shortly after signing an initial contract in 2024 covering U.S. book editors and other academic publishing workers, OUP fired staff and transferred their work to the United Kingdom, breaching a key contract term that the News Media Guild had negotiated.
“The Employer breached Article 1…when it laid off the 13 bargaining unit employees because of the assignment or reassignment of the protected work to non-unit employees,” ruled Arbitrator Jacquelin F. Drucker. “The evidence supporting this finding is extensive,” she said of the Guild’s presentation made in January.
OUP is a division of Oxford University in England.
The ruling is historic, said Tony Winton, the Guild’s executive director, because it vindicates language in many News Guild contacts negotiated to limit offshoring and use of non-bargaining unit personnel.
Drucker noted the employer also refused to provide information about the offshoring, which led the Guild to file an unfair labor practice charge with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board. That case is still pending, but the agency has indicated that the union’s contentions have merit. The NLRB informed the Guild that the matter is expected to go forward to a complaint and hearing before an administrative law judge, absent a settlement.
“I’d been frustrated at how OUP management delayed this process throughout so we are only confirming now that they indeed violated their contract with us, but I’m hopeful that this verdict coming now could help save the jobs of the UK staff they are currently trying to lay off,” said Rachel Perkins, former Lead Designer for Academic Book Covers.
Ongoing Strike
Perkins was referring to another labor dispute, where a group of U.K. workers are on strike against OUP. Members of the UNITE union say finance jobs are being unnecessarily offshored to enlarge profits for the University.
The workers are asking the global academic community to write to Irene Tracey, the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, to reverse the layoff decision and place renewed emphasis on progressive labor relations values. The petition can be found here
Next Steps
In the U.S. case, Drucker ordered OUP and the Guild to jointly propose an “agreed remedy” by Nov. 6, but said she would order one if the company and the union did not reach an agreement.
“The News Media Guild expects employers to honor written agreements when it comes to job security terms and provisions like offshoring,” said Kimberlee Kruesi, the Guild’s acting president. “We call on Oxford to quickly restore the work it illegally removed from the U.S. without further delay.”
The News Media Guild is Local 31222 of The NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America. It represents workers at Associated Press, the Guardian, Financial Times, the EFE News Service, and Democracy Works. It was represented in the arbitration by Barbara Camens of Barr & Camens in Washington, D.C.