Employees of Pro-Socialist Magazine Current Affairs Claim They Were Fired For Starting a Workers Co-Op
Employees of the pro-Socialist magazine Current Affairs claimed they were fired for starting a worker cooperative.
Most of the employees at the magazine wrote in an open letter that they were fired on Aug. 8 by editor-in-chief Nathan Robinson “to avoid an organizational restructuring that would limit his personal power.”
Current Affairs was founded in 2015 and advocates Marxist and Socialist ideas featuring articles such as “Can Florida’s Sunshine Socialist Bring Working Class Politics to St. Pete?,” “Meet The Democratic Socialist Holding Barack Obama’s Old State Senate Seat” and “Life in Revolutionary Times: Lessons From the 1960s.”
“Yes, we were fired by the editor-in-chief of a socialist magazine for trying to start a worker co-op,” wrote the letter’s signees – former business manager Allegra Silcox, former managing & amusements editor Lyta Gold, former administrative assistant Kate Christian Gauthreaux, former podcast producer Aisling McCrea and former poet at large Cate Root.
The letter stated that the issue of organizational restructuring “has been a topic for most of 2020 and 2021.”
“We discussed it informally, we tried piecemeal reforms, we did a full-organization survey and one-on-one interviews with editors and staff to try to find consensus on a collective vision,” continued the letter. “Everyone’s stated goal, including Nathan’s, was to create a democratic workplace where all voices were equally valued.”
However, come a ZOOM meeting on Aug. 7, Robinson “became agitated” and “insisted that in our attempt to set shared internal values, we were disregarding his vision for Current Affairs as published in the first issue,” according to the letter.
“There was a palpable shift in his demeanor, and he behaved in a hostile manner throughout the rest of the conversation,” it continued. “The next morning, he started removing people from the company Slack, and sent letters requesting resignations, eliminating positions, and in some cases offering new ‘honorary titles’ which would have no say in governance.”
Slack is a platform that allows a company’s employees to communicate with one another.
The letter said, “In individual letters, Nathan claimed that he had irreparably lost faith in our ability to work together. But less than 24 hours later, he sent follow-up emails, retracting his statements and admitting that he simply did not want Current Affairs to be a democratic workplace. He believes ‘in (his) guts’ that the magazine and media venture we have collectively created is purely his.”
According to the letter, Robinson wrote:
This organization has been heading slowly for some sort of reckoning where it was going to have to be made clear once and for all what kind of authority I wanted to have over it. And I was in denial about the fact that the answer is I think I should be on top of the org chart, with everyone else selected by me and reporting to me. I let Current Affairs build up into a sort of egalitarian community of friends while knowing in my heart that I still thought of it as my project over which I should have control.
The letter stated, “We note darkly that he says “egalitarian community of friends,’ and not, of course, a workplace. Nathan’s overtures since the purge have been to reach out to repair friendships, or hastily offer new ad hoc work. But he is fundamentally missing the point that he has effectively fired us for organizing for better work conditions.”
The letter also mentioned that Robinson has himself admitted that he is “not good at running an organization.”
The former employees said they were “fired without warning.”
Mediaite has reached out to Robinson for comment about the letter.
The publication will “take a one-month hiatus, and all staff (including Nathan and the workers he fired) will be paid through September,” according to the letter.
