MANHATTAN: HarperCollins Workers Hold A One Day Strike For Liveable Wages

MANHATTAN (NYC) NY: Workers at book publisher HarperCollins held a one-day strike on Wednesday at the company’s New York City headquarters.

Workers had voted by 99.5 percent to authorize the strike action. About 100 workers and supporters picketed on a sweltering summer day to demand better pay and improved family leave benefits.

HarperCollins employees often go through multiple internships for two years that pay $14 or $15 an hour. Full starting pay, depending on the tier, is $40,000 to $45,000.

The average salary for HarperCollins workers is $55,000 per year.

the publisher like other corporations, it has been making huge profits during the pandemic.

For the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2021, the company’s revenue increased by 19 percent to $1.985 billion.

Unlike most workers in the publishing industry, the HarperCollins workers are members of a union.

They belong to Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers (UAW), which has had a presence at the company for more than 80 years.

The publishing industry has historically paid wages that are barely at subsistence level in the big cities in which the industry is concentrated.

After limiting the strike to only one day, the union set up a strike fund and took donations instead of paying workers out of the existing $826 million UAW strike fund.

HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Corp.

News Corp, is an American media and publishing company founded by Rupert Murdoch in 1980. Its notable assets include Dow Jones & Company (publisher of The Wall Street Journal), News UK (publisher of The Sun and The Times), News Corp Australia, REA Group (operator of realestate.com.au), Realtor.com, as well as, the New York Post, a daily newspaper in New York City acquired by Murdoch in 1976.