Some Bloomberg employees want to unionize

Fearful of layoffs and unhappy with work conditions, employees at a unit of Bloomberg LP have launched a campaign to unionize, Peter Elkind of Fortune writes.

Elkind reports, “The drive, to join Local 32035 of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, involves about a hundred salaried data analysts at Bloomberg’s large campus in Skillman, N.J. They work for the company’s struggling Bloomberg Law division. If successful, it would be the first time any group of Bloomberg employees has voted to join a union.

“Bloomberg spokesman Ty Trippet declined to comment.

“Success in organizing the Bloomberg employees would represent a boost for newspaper guilds. Unions in the industry have lost leverage as change has ripped through the news business over the past decade. (Employees at Fortune’s publisher, Time Inc, are represented by a guild.)

“Bloomberg has historically been inhospitable to organized labor. A 2004 drive to organize the company’s New York headquarters staff ultimately fizzled without a vote.

“The company, which employs more than 15,000, acquired its only union in 2011, with the $992 million purchase of the Bureau of National Affairs, which is based in suburban Washington D.C. and publishes newsletters and reports on business, law, and government. About 700 of BNA’s workers belong to two Newspaper Guild bargaining units, which have represented workers there for decades.

“In a 2013 cost-cutting move after the acquisition, Bloomberg consolidated BLAW (as its legal-data service is known) with BNA in Washington, resulting in about 80 layoffs.”

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