Union Leaders Approached the Head of HR. Condé Nast Fired Them for 'Extreme Misconduct'

Alma Avalle didn't go into work last Wednesday thinking she would be putting her job at risk by speaking with Condé Nast's head of HR; the 27-year-old Bon Appétit journalist and union leader simply wanted to stand up for her colleagues, particularly those whom Condé Nast management had just laid off from Teen Vogue as the publication was folded into its ossified older sister and defanged of its politics coverage. Instead, Avalle was mostly excited for her editorial task of the day: reviewing a new coffee maker that had just been ordered to the office.

But the day would end with Avalle terminated for what Condé Nast would later call "extreme misconduct," after she and around 20 other Condé Nast Union members, along with members of the New Yorker Union, confronted Stan Duncan, the media conglomerate's "chief people officer," outside of his office. Video footage shows Avalle, Duncan, and a few other union members going back and forth for just over a minute and twenty seconds, before Duncan retreats behind the glass door of his One World Trade Center office. It is, all and all, an extremely normal-looking union action—as normal as anything can be after mass layoffs at a media company.

The company used that fairly anodyne action to justify firing Avalle and three other Condé Nast workers who were also union leaders, despite their having a just cause stipulation in their union contract. According to Avalle, five other union members also have been suspended for three days without pay for participating in the same demonstration. 

According to a statement from Condé, that video "captures only a portion of the incident." "Extreme misconduct is unacceptable in any professional setting," the company said in the statement. "This includes aggressive, disruptive, and threatening behavior of any kind. We have a responsibility to provide a workplace where every employee feels respected and able to do their job without harassment or intimidation. We also cannot ignore behavior that crosses the line into targeted harassment and disruption of business operations. We remain committed to working constructively with the union and all of our employees." (When Hell Gate reached out to Condé Nast for comment, we were sent a similar statement that also noted the media company is filing its own NLRB complaint against the NewsGuild of New York.)

Avalle is, incidentally, a VP of the NewsGuild of New York, of which the Condé union is a part. She's also the founder of the union's Trans Guild Caucus, centered around improving contract language for trans Guild members and, in her words, "creating protections for people who are speaking out against negative coverage of trans issues, whether that be at the New York Times or other news guild publications."

In response, the NewsGuild of New York has filed grievances with the National Labor Relations Board, contesting the four terminations, the unpaid suspensions, and the fact that union members were told to go back to their desks when confronting Duncan. 

We spoke with Avalle this week. And while she's hoping Condé reverses its course, she sees what happened to her as a pattern of escalation from an executive team emboldened by the weakening of national labor laws—and cowed by the Trump administration. 

"Only a week earlier, actually, the union's Diversity Committee met with senior management and the head of labor relations. I wasn't in this meeting, but apparently an executive said something to the effect of, the company is trying to avoid the attention of the Trump administration, and trying to avoid the attention and the scrutiny of the right," Avalle said. "So saying that one week, and then laying off one of your major dissenting publications a week later sends a pretty clear statement, at least to me as a union member, and I think to a lot of our members."

We spoke with Avalle about what went down on the day she was fired, simmering tensions at Condé, and what happens next.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.