Why We’re Organizing
The full-time and part-time producers and engineers of Lemonada Media are proud to unionize with the Writers Guild of America East. As tallied on Friday, April 12, 100% of the production team signed union cards in solidarity. As a union, it’s our goal to continue creating a culture of collaboration, creativity, and care that makes our work possible. We are invested in our future as employees of Lemonada Media and want to ensure that, as a company, our actions correspond to our values.
In 2019, Lemonada launched with thoughtful, candid shows. Since then, we’ve expanded our slate of shows to a packed roster that spans genres, formats, and mediums. We’ve won numerous industry awards, forged critical partnerships, and built a reputation for telling stories with a heart. We’ve also grown from a small group into an organization of over 50 employees. These changes have come with satisfying celebrations, but also with growing pains and setbacks.
Lemonada was founded with the motto to “make life suck less.” Within a volatile industry, we recognize that one way life sucks less is through the rights and benefits currently provided to us by Lemonada. Our union represents our commitment to codifying these rights and benefits, as well as proactively protecting ourselves in the face of uncertainty. Through collective bargaining, we hope to honor our core values of equity, empathy, and honesty. Throughout our organizing, we have identified key areas of improvement that we believe will boost morale and create a more egalitarian work environment.
These include:
- Standardized and equitable severance
- Clear and fair disciplinary, termination, and resignation policies
- Concrete, measurable, and ambitious diversity initiatives
- Employee protection if Lemonada Media is acquired
- Straightforward processes and outlined expectations for advancement and promotion
- Transparency and employee input in company decision making
- Adequate onboarding and tools to do our jobs to our full potential
The Lemonada Media Union stands in solidarity with unionized audio production houses such as Pineapple Street, Vox, NPR, and iHeartMedia, as well as with groups across the broader media landscape, which is rapidly evolving. These changes directly impact our livelihood and we believe that, without protection, they also greatly hinder all media workers’ abilities to be creative, take risks, and make great work. We see collective bargaining as an important intervention to support the people behind this work, and to sustain the industry we uphold.