{"id":138445,"date":"2025-02-28T21:05:48","date_gmt":"2025-03-01T02:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2025\/02\/28\/10-months-after-voting-to-unionize-distrokid-employees-say-management-needs-to-return-to-the-bargaining-table\/"},"modified":"2025-02-28T21:05:48","modified_gmt":"2025-03-01T02:05:48","slug":"10-months-after-voting-to-unionize-distrokid-employees-say-management-needs-to-return-to-the-bargaining-table","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2025\/02\/28\/10-months-after-voting-to-unionize-distrokid-employees-say-management-needs-to-return-to-the-bargaining-table\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Months After Voting to Unionize, DistroKid Employees Say Management Needs to Return to the Bargaining\u00a0Table"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tEmployees of DistroKid are still working without a contract 10 months after they voted to unionize \u2014 and now their union is hoping to raise awareness of their plight after more than 40% of the company\u2019s staff was terminated<\/a> and their jobs outsourced to the Philippines late last year.<\/p>\n

\n\tBill Bores<\/strong>, chapter president of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-Communication Workers of America Local 15 (NABET-CAW) \u2014 the union representing the DistroKid employees \u2014 estimates that 37 jobs were lost in the recent purge at the New York-based company, which operates virtually with nearly all employees working from home.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\"DistroKid\"<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tDistrokid Places 37 Union Employees on \u2018Administrative Leave\u2019\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\n\tAt the time of the layoffs, DistroKid management said the cuts were part of a larger effort to fix issues around customer service, specifically \u201cby expanding to 24\/7 customer service with faster response times.\u201d The company mostly serves independent artists, acting as a digital music distribution service to help musicians upload and monetize their music through sites like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music. The site was valued at $1.3 billion in 2021 following a recapitalization deal with New York investment firm Insight Partners and reportedly has a customer base of two million artists.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn April, more than 63% of DistroKid employees voted to unionize with NABET-CAW, and the victory was later certified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Company management and union officials even sat for their first collective bargaining session in July, but talks have been slow due to a lack of availability to meet, says Bores.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe finally got something on the calendar with them for October, when the company\u2019s attorney called me and said they\u2019re going to fire half the unit,\u201d says Bores, referring to the 37 employees who were initially placed on \u201cadministrative leave\u201d before being terminated. Bores says many of the terminated employees had backed the union efforts and that many had worked in both customer and artist services roles. The employees were eventually replaced by a support team operating out of the Philippines, managed by offshoring company Concentrix.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy union knows that company very well because they have been involved in providing scabs and people to cross picket lines and thwart union drives,\u201d Bores says. \u201dSo not only did they lay off American workers who are unionizing, they sent their work to the Philippines to workers there that make very little compared to the workers here in New York.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement to Billboard<\/em>, DistroKid officials defended the staffing change, writing, \u201cDistroKid remains focused on delivering a best-in-class support experience for independent artists worldwide. Since initiating our ramp-up to 24\/7 support late last year, artist response times have improved by 74% over the past three months and 90% year-over-year. In the coming weeks, we\u2019ll also roll out live chat for the highest-volume categories, further enhancing accessibility and efficiency for artists everywhere. Achieving this level of service required making difficult decisions that impacted valued team members, and we are deeply grateful for their contributions.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tCD Baby Lays Off Members of Its Creator Services\u00a0Team\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\n\tFormer employee Wilson Rahn<\/strong>, a customer service employee who lost his job during the October purge, says DistroKid\u2019s claims don\u2019t align with what he experienced at the company.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy perception is that they were not bargaining in good faith,\u201d says Rahn, who is still looking for work. \u201cI worked on their customer support funnel, made it faster and more effective and had a record of showing that I was succeeding in that. So my firing is pretty clearly, in my opinion, just because I was vocally supportive of the union.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBores has filed four complaints against DistroKid with the NLRB but said the labor body has effectively been rendered powerless by President Donald Trump<\/strong>. On Jan. 27, Trump fired NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox<\/strong>, leaving the board with only two members \u2014 one below the minimum number needed to legally function. The firing has left the NLRB unable to certify union elections or hear complaints from workers. Without an enforcement option from the federal government, Bores says there is little his union can do to force DistroKid back to the bargaining table aside from applying public pressure campaigns.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the worst-case scenario, says Bores, DistroKid could hold out until the one-year anniversary of the unionization vote, at which point it would be legally allowed to challenge the union\u2019s right to continue representing employees. But he says he\u2019s hopeful it won\u2019t come to that and that the two sides will have a final contract ready to sign by next month.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Aller \u00e0 la source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Employees of DistroKid are still working without a contract 10 months after they voted to unionize \u2014 and now their union is hoping to raise awareness of their plight after more than 40% of the company\u2019s staff was terminated and their jobs outsourced to the Philippines late last year. Bill Bores, chapter president of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musique","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}