Condé Nast Reaches Deal With Union...Without Expanded Healthcare for Trans Employees

Last week, it very much seemed like the Condé Nast Union was about to rain on the Met Gala’s parade of performative activism and very pretty gowns. But in the wee Monday morning hours, Condé Nast—which publishes Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Teen Vogue, and GQ, among others—and its union finally reached a tentative contract with management, successfully averting what could have been a dramatic strike on "Fashion's Biggest Night." “Our pledge to do ‘whatever it takes’ ahead of the [Met Gala] moved the company and our progress at the bargaining table kicked into high gear,” the Condé Union wrote in a statement shared on Twitter. Among the victories are a $61,500 starting salary floor, guaranteed comp time after 40 hours of work, expanded bereavement leave, two more weeks of family leave (14 total), and $3.3 million in total wage increases. And for those employees facing layoffs, eight weeks of severance, and three months of COBRA coverage or a one-time lump sum payment. But coverage for expanded healthcare for trans employees in the union was omitted. WHEN WE FIGHT, WE WIN: We are excited to announce that we have a tentative agreement with @condenast on our first contract. Our pledge to do ‘whatever it takes’ ahead of the #metgala2024 moved the company and our progress at the bargaining table kicked into high gear… pic.twitter.com/Yu2nm4di86 — condeunion (@condeunion) May 6, 2024 So for Alma Avalle, a Bon Appetit writer and web producer, and representative for the union, the wins feel bittersweet. Avalle, who identifies as trans, told Jezebel she spent months researching and writing proposals for expanded healthcare for trans employees only for management to leave them on the table. While the company's insurance does cover top and bottom surgeries as well as prescriptions for hormones, other gender-affirming procedures for the small number of trans employees in the union (less than 10, by Avalle's estimation) such as facial feminization and masculinization procedures and voice therapy were ultimately not included in the contract. "I think it's especially hypocritical for the company that publishes them.us as well as Teen Vogue and Vogue and GQ and all these other publications to be so willing to profit off of the aesthetics of queerness and the aesthetics of transness, then refuse to give their employees the health care that they need," Avalle told Jezebel. The company offers health insurance through AETNA, whose website lists a number of procedures deemed "not medically necessary," including facial procedures. However, both Hearst Magazines Media's and Vox Media's contracts—both negotiated by the Writer's Guild of America East—adhere to World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) standards which consider facial feminization and masculinization to be medically necessary. Avalle said that in addition to proposing a number of contract options that would've included the aforementioned procedures (which, again, have already been ratified in contracts negotiated by the Writer's Guild of America East), she shared her own personal experience of being unable to access "life-saving" care as an employee at the company while at the bargaining table. To Jezebel, she recalled dealing with depression and feeling "immobilized" by the grief of not being able to access care.  "It's incredibly frustrating, as a trans woman, to have to share your own experience and say, 'I can't afford gender-affirming surgery, I have to do my job at this glitzy company, knowing this thing that could be potentially life-changing—or even life-saving—for me is out of reach," Avalle said. "Having to plead that case to a group of presumably cis people and have them tell you 'What we have is enough' is so draining." "To me, it feels like an issue…