HarperCollins Workers Just Ended a Three-Month Strike
After three months on strike, employees at HarperCollins Publishers are now back at work after finally ratifying a new contract with the company. Jacobin spoke with HarperCollins workers about their walkout and what they won.
Employees of HarperCollins strike outside the company’s offices in Manhattan, November 15, 2022. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
On November 10, 2022, workers at HarperCollins Publishers walked off the job over what they described as the company’s refusal to put a fair contract offer on the table, citing HarperCollins’s refusal to move on wage increases and other demands. After nearly three months on strike, the union representing the workers, United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2110, announced it had reached a tentative agreement with the company on February 9, 2023; on February 16, the union announced that its members had ratified the contract. Workers formally ended the strike and returned to work earlier this week. Jacobin’s Sara Wexler spoke with HarperCollins worker-organizers about their strike and what it achieved.
Sara Wexler
When did the organizing around the strike begin?
Shannon Cox
We did a one-day strike in July; that took several weeks of conversation to do, to go on strike for one day, and we were hoping that that would be enough to make the company deliver a fair offer. But when that didn’t happen, we were still trying to meet with them over the next couple of months. Then again, when that was not working, we had a bit of an ongoing conversation between July and November 2022.
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