“My personal opinion is that it’s union-busting,” said Lisa Gusty, a Washington Post senior software engineer and co-vice chair of The Washington Post Tech Guild. “They’re trying to sow confusion and sort of pit us against one another.”
The Guild represents employees in engineering, product design and data roles at the Washington Post.
Gusty commented in the wake of a wave of layoffs and access restrictions that have shaken the newspaper’s technology workforce in recent days and raised questions about whether management’s actions comply with federal labor law.
On Feb. 4, the Washington Post announced it would lay off more than a quarter of its technology staff. Seventy-six of roughly 280 Tech Guild members were slated for termination. Gusty — a software engineer with 26 years tenure at the Post — was among those selected.
Less than a week later, on Feb. 10, Gusty was at a dinner party when the union’s Slack “blew up.” Members clogged the channels, reacting to the Post’s chief technology officer’s email informing the tech employees slated for dismissal that The Post management had locked them out of both its offices and “core engineering systems.”
Rushing home, Gusty discovered she longer could access to the company systems.
“I guess my first thought was they’re going to proceed with this illegal layoff,” Gusty said.
The Tech Guild
In 2021, Washington Post tech workers began a bid to organize their workplace. The Washington Post Tech Guild went public in April of 2025. On May 23, tech employees voted 171 to 38 to unionize. The National Labor Relations Board later certified the Guild.
The Tech Guild operates alongside the Washington Post Guild, founded in 1934, which represents journalists and newsroom staff. It soon began negotiations with the Washington Post over an initial contract to cover more than 300 technology workers at the Post. There have been two meetings with management, Gusty said.
Termination notices issued to Tech Guild members last week listed an effective date of April 10, a Gusty stated. The subsequent lockout shocked workers, given it was nearly two months before their termination date.
Four of the six members of the Tech Guild’s unit council, the union’s executive board, were among those selected for termination.
Labor Law
Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), unions possess “status quo” rights. Whenever a new union is certified, or when a collective bargaining agreement expires, the law requires employers to maintain existing staffing levels, wages, benefits and working conditions until the parties negotiate a new contract or discover a legal impasse, said Michael Hayes, a professor emeritus at the University of Baltimore School of Law and a former director of the US Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards under President Barack Obama. These protections typically bar layoffs of union members except in limited and extraordinary economic circumstances. However, the lockout itself does not necessarily violate status quo, he said.
Employers typically employ lockouts to pressure a union to accept terms in order to end the work stoppage, Hayes said. “But it’s kind of pointless here,” he added, “because if they accept the terms and end the lockout, people still don’t have a job.”
The NLRA does protect the terms and conditions of employment — including termination, Hayes said. Employers generally may not make unilateral changes affecting employees without bargaining with the union. There are exceptions for extreme emergencies, but those carry a high legal bar. Another exception can apply if negotiations have reached a bona fide impasse after lengthy bargaining, he said.
That is not what has occurred here, said The Tech Guild.
Guild leaders learned of the mass dismissals at the same time as other technology employees, during an early-morning webinar on Feb. 4 hosted by the Post’s chief technology officer and human resources officials. During that meeting, employees first learned about their severance package, Gusty said.
“They were the terms that the newsroom was getting, and they were not the terms that were being offered to the tech guild,” Gusty said. When written offers later arrived, the packages for tech workers were significantly less generous.
Based on the public facts, there may be grounds for a claim that the company failed to bargain in good faith, Hayes said. Management’s terminations may also may qualify retaliation against union activity, he added.
The 76 terminated Tech Guild include four of the six members of the union’s governing council. Management disproportionately targeted the union’s leadership, The Guild said.
The Tech Guild has the right to file a complaint with The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), said Hayes. A court could view that concentration as evidence of retaliation, he added, although the Post might justify the selections on business grounds.
“At the same time, we’re living in a moment when a lot of established law is being challenged,” Hayes said. “If you know any labor history, they could be trying to rewrite labor law by doing this. We’ve seen a lot of that lately — some of it in constitutional law, some in employment law, some in administrative law. There’s a potential they’re following the lead and saying, if we act boldly enough, maybe we can overwhelm the system and they won’t find a violation,” Hayes cautioned.
The Elephant In The Room
Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has opposed unionization at Amazon. That company has faced multiple NLRB complaints about tactics used during union elections. Together with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Amazon and other corporations mounted a court challenge to the constitutionality of the NLRB.
Actions at Amazon do not necessarily support an accusation of anti-union bias against unions at the Post, Hayes said. The Guild would have to prove in the connection in court. Bezos has owned the Post for more than a decade, maintaining a collegial relationship with the Washington Post Guild until 2024, when he canceled the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris.
“Just because Bezos is perceived, or even has been found, to have animus to unions in those other companies, doesn’t mean that fact or that finding could be applied in this situation,” Hayes said.
Fight The Power
On Feb. 10, Tech Guild members gathered at Post headquarters and attempted to enter their offices, Post security guards turned them away, an encounter the union recorded on video.
After the locked out, Guild members regrouped to plan and support to affected workers, Gusty said. The Guild is preparing to file a complaint with the NLRB. The union has established a GoFundMe page to preparation for a strike.
“We’re fighting to get Jeff Bezos and the new CEO to roll back these cuts,” Gusty said. “We’ve been fighting this too long to let this go.”
The Washington Post did not respond to request for comment in time for publication.
