Candidate for Council, Online Media Sector
While journalism contends with compounding crises, too many solutions forget our greatest strength lies within. Upended by technology and undermined by political powers, the issues facing our industry may be specific but the forces behind them are shaking workers everywhere.
Organized labor has the strength, grit and savvy to shape the future of our industry and as a candidate to represent the Online Media sector on the Writers Guild of America East’s council, I am committed to serving fellow members with that as my guiding principle.
I’m Kelby Vera, a senior reporter at HuffPost and shop steward with HuffPost Union who served on the bargaining committee for our industry-leading 2026 CBA, has negotiated multiple reductions in force and organized campaigns within our unit and beyond.
This January, I was part of a 11 person team which fought tirelessly for a contract that didn’t surrender previous wins and proactively secured protections against future threats.
Unanimously ratified by our 69-member bargaining unit, HuffPost Union’s 2026-2029 CBA established critical protections against AI, maintained our core economic promises, codified parental leave and unlimited sick time without compromising on language protecting our most vulnerable members.
When presented with a two-tier severance formula, we refused to sell out future workers for short-term promises, while still preserving language guaranteeing 30-day layoff notice and two months’ minimum severance pay plus one week per year of service.
We were unwavering when pressured to abandon our commitment to a diverse and representative newsroom, nor did we allow uncertainty around technology stop us from securing AI protections. We were able to do this because 100% of our members were unified about what the contract we deserved looked like, and what we were willing to do to secure it.
When hit by back-to-back layoffs in January 2025 and again this July, the HuffPost Union committee spent countless hours enforcing our CBA shrewdly and meticulously.
The pain of 2025’s 30% cut to our newsroom was tempered by a union-negotiated buyout deal, the first in HuffPost history. Buyouts allowed a majority of departing colleagues to exit on their terms with extended severance, benefits and dignity.
In August, the impact of our organizing came into sharp focus when 170 non-union colleagues across HuffPost’s parent company, BuzzFeed Inc., were let go with just hours notice and slapped by an 11th-hour policy change attempting to deprive them of thousands of dollars of banked and promised PTO — a sketchy, cost-saving ploy I confronted company leadership to explain, backed by the courage of my union comrades.
During less hectic times, HuffPost Union has fought for members’ to get better schedules and long-overdue promotions, prevented colleagues from being moved out of unit, caught costly HR and payroll mistakes, mobilized a successful campaign against company-wide cuts to our parental leave policy and more.
As one of the union committee’s only representatives from the Trends team in the union’s existence, I helped welcome a once-isolated part of the newsroom into the fold and opened the door for them to become active, engaged and enthusiastic members.
Beyond HuffPost, I’ve bonded with leaders from fellow Guild shops and other unions as an educator, co–teaching a strike strategy workshop at WGAE’s 2024 Online Media summit and facilitating Labor Notes’ media workers meeting at this year’s conference.
I am proud to be part of a union that wields its political strength, from WGAE’s work to establish legal guardrails around AI to fighting the threat of media monopolies with the joint suit to block the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.
When organized labor takes an active role in these battles, it’s clear why the collective strength of the working class is the strongest weapon against oligarchs and fascists intent on stripping the rest of our humanity, dignity and agency.
While the media industry’s C-suite cadre undermined itself by chasing the fickle whims of tech companies, allowing our work to fuel their platforms for little to nothing while siphoning resources away from quality journalism, our contracts and our comrades have been critical safeguards from the cruelty of capitalism. Just cause protections, guaranteed severance, extended health insurance and substantive layoff notice have been literal lifesavers for many.
Still, it’s little surprise that the trauma of losing our jobs, our colleagues, our venues to communicate has triggered our survival instincts, putting unionized news and media workers on defense when we are uniquely positioned to define the future of our industry and expand union power at large.
As union members, the WGAE’s rank and file have proved time and time again that our collective strength can secure fair benefits and wages, defend vulnerable colleagues, cultivate diverse newsrooms, guard against groundless discipline and dismissal, and resist encroachment of AI.
As journalists, we are the link between a bafflingly complex world and the people who live through it. Though facts and truth are at the center of our craft, what we choose to examine shapes how people understand their circumstances and lays bare who’s pulling the levers of power.
Together, these make the Guild’s Online Media members a natural vanguard for the revitalization of the labor movement, primed to organize workers across industry, locale and political persuasion.
Public support for labor unions polls at 68% while membership lingers under 10%. As communicators and organizers, we are here to bridge that gap.
As a representative for the Online Media sector on the WGAE council, I promise to defend our members’ hard-fought rights, protect journalism as a critical resource and not just commodity, expand our membership, foster solidarity between industries and further cultivate a community within the Guild committed to actively shaping the future of media and beyond.
Unions shaped my life long before I had the joy of joining my own. As the child of an organizer with the Inland Boatman’s Union, I grew up watching my father pour over binders of contracts and shuttle from picket lines to job sites in between his time on the clock as a tugboat captain.
Witnessing all the time, energy (and sometimes angst) he willingly gave to his union, I still never imagined organizing would be the most meaningful, life-affirming work I would ever do. It would be a profound privilege to serve the members of the WGAE’s Online Media sector and continue this work.
Endorsements
Kevin Cortez, Sara David, Jared Greenhouse, Sanjana Karanth, Mark Kramer, Zachary Lennon-Simon, Mary Perkins, Susan Rinkunas, Matt Shuham
Endorse Kelby Vera for Council, Online Media Sector
Note: WGAW members who wish to endorse a candidate may follow the process outlined in section G.1.B of the 2026 Election Policy.
