Publishing’s ‘Hot Labor Summer’ Signals a New Union Era

A run of union victories this summer has given publishing workers a new sense of momentum, and industry observers are beginning to talk about a “hot labor summer” for books. From New York to Chicago to Portland, employees have been organizing around a shared complaint: that the rewards of working in publishing have not kept pace with the demands of the job.

Last month, roughly 600 workers at Hachette Book Group joined the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, creating what is now the largest trade publishing union in history. Their vote came amid a burst of organizing elsewhere in the sector: Catapult Book Group employees launched a union drive, staff at University of Chicago Press followed, and workers at Dark Horse Comics moved to organize as well. The union efforts at Hachette, Catapult, and University of Chicago Press all won elections, while Dark Horse Workers United secured voluntary recognition from management.

The common themes behind those campaigns were strikingly similar. In public statements and in conversations with Publishers Weekly, employees pointed to low pay, heavy workloads, and limited room to advance. One organizer at Hachette, Julia DeVarti, described the industry’s “passion tax,” the idea that workers are expected to accept poor conditions because they love books. That dynamic, NewsGuild president Jon Schleuss said, is especially visible in corporate publishing, where entry-level staff may initially accept reduced pay and benefits for the prestige of working at a Big Five house, only to see those compromises become long-term norms.

The surge is notable because publishing unions have long been the exception rather than the rule. HarperCollins staff, organized with the United Auto Workers, have been the only unionized employees among the Big Five for more than 80 years. Union membership more broadly has fallen dramatically in the United States over the decades, and the history of book publishing mirrors that decline. Historian Shannan Clark’s The Making of the American Creative Class traces an early wave of organizing in the 1940s, followed by the damage done by the McCarthy era and then a second wave in the 1960s and 1970s. Olga Brudastova, who leads UAW Local 2110 and represents the HarperCollins and Catapult unions, said the mergers and acquisitions that repeatedly reshape publishing also helped erode earlier union gains in the 1980s and 1990s.

What feels different now, union leaders say, is that workers are increasingly treating publishing as labor, not just vocation. Sarah Robbins, an Abrams Books editor whose workplace unionized with UAW in May 2025, said employees are more willing to acknowledge the physical toll of desk work and deadlines, even if the job is not traditionally seen as manual labor. That mindset, along with the larger NewsGuild footprint in publishing since 2020, suggests a growing willingness to confront a status quo that many workers had previously accepted as part of the profession.

The pandemic years also appear to have changed expectations. Several workers said organizing accelerated after publishers rolled back work-from-home arrangements and other Covid-era accommodations. At Catapult, contract and rights associate and awards coordinator Miriam Vance said the removal of sick time policies made workers realize how many of their benefits had never been secured in writing. At Dark Horse, an organizer said employees hired during the pandemic led the union effort after the company required in-office attendance two days a week and a wage freeze and higher insurance costs worsened conditions.

Artificial intelligence has become another pressure point. Schleuss said the NewsGuild has won AI protections in 90 contracts across journalism and publishing, including clauses that bar employers from replacing workers with AI or using automation to cut pay. University of Chicago Press, senior promotions manager and organizer Adrienne Meyers said, already restricts AI use by authors and peer reviewers and does not currently use such tools internally, but she wants contractual safeguards in case management changes or institutional pressure alters that stance.

Publishing executives have not always welcomed the trend. The HarperCollins strike in 2022 lasted more than three months and, at the time, was described by PW as perhaps the most significant organized labor effort at a U.S. publisher in nearly half a century. Hachette, meanwhile, circulated anti-union graphics when workers first went public, though after the union win CEO David Shelley accepted the result and said the company was entering “a new era.” Some employers have already made adjustments around pay: starting salaries rose at Macmillan and Hachette in 2023, and Penguin Random House increased its starting pay from $51,000 to $55,000 as Hachette’s election wrapped up this summer.

Whether the recent wins lead to lasting changes across publishing may depend on how many more workers decide to follow the same path. But the public response has already been enthusiastic, especially among younger employees carrying student debt and high living costs in New York. The Young Publishers Association is planning a labor panel, and its founder, Noah Perkins, said the HarperCollins strike made the wage effect of collective action hard to ignore. Nearly 90% of staffers at University of Chicago Press ultimately voted for the union there, a result that may be one of the clearest signs yet that publishing workers are no longer waiting for conditions to improve on their own.