The New Yorker Union is enacting a work stoppage for twenty-four hours starting at 6 AM today. The union is protesting the response to their wage proposal, which included a salary floor of $65,000, among other provisions. According to the union, management’s response was a floor of $45,000 and a proposal that would allow them to decrease union members’ salaries at any time. As the union writes in a statement posted today, “The company’s proposal showed disrespect for us and for the work we do. Today’s work stoppage is meant to remind The New Yorker and Condé Nast of the value of our labor, and to demonstrate our members’ solidarity in fighting for a fair contract.”
Vogue interviews inaugural poet Amanda Gorman. Looking back at 2020, Gorman observes: “It has been hard on all counts, but I’ve been writing my way through it.”
At the New Statesman, Lola Seaton makes the case that the late theorist Mark Fisher has become one of the most important and influential thinkers of our time. Seaton writes, “Fisher’s attention to aspects of daily life that might seem too boring or personal to be worthy of collective interest was, I think, propelled by an intuition that part of what sustains our acquiescence to the status quo is our inattention to it.” For more on Fisher, see Sasha Frere-Jones’s essay in Bookforum’s Feb/Mar 2019 issue.
The New York Times talks with Mateo Askaripour, whose debut novel, Black Buck, became a best-seller last week.
Tomorrow night, the Strand will host an event for the new anthology Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic, featuring the book’s editor Alice Quinn and poets from the collection, including Eileen Myles, Yusef Komunyakaa, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Grace Schulman, and more. The 6 PM event is free.
