Laid Off: A Reporter During Union Negotiations

"Thanks to the union, we were able to get several more weeks of severance for everyone."

Aug 14, 2025

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In today’s issue, I talk to former Quartz investigative reporter Hanna Kozlowska about negotiating layoffs from her living room in the early days of the pandemic, winning extra severance and COBRA coverage, and what the bargaining table revealed about newsroom power.

In the spring of 2020, Hanna Kozlowska was spending long days in union bargaining sessions at Quartz, where she’d worked as a reporter for more than five years. The pandemic was gutting the company’s advertising business. Staff was worrying about layoffs. By mid-April, management made it official: cuts were likely. “It became the main topic of our union bargaining sessions,” she said.

Then, during bargaining, HR told the committee that two of its five members would be laid off. “Several of us, including myself, immediately thought it would be us.” Soon after, Hanna saw her name on a spreadsheet, along with more than twenty other union members who were also being let go. Nearly half the staff in total lost their jobs.

“I’m speaking to you almost exactly five years after the layoff,” Hanna said. “Going through those old documents and chats and emails brought up a lot of feelings that I wasn't expecting to have — sadness, anger, disappointment. But I smiled a lot, too, seeing all that evidence of solidarity and friendship. Unionize, unionize, unionize!”

What were some of the projects you worked on while you were there?

I reported from the 2016 campaign trail, a Gilmore Girls fan festival, and a giant momfluencer conference. I wrote big features on the cruelty of video visitation in prison and on how vigilantes used Facebook to hunt suspected pedophiles. I investigated how the US Marshals Service used private prisons on a massive scale, and how the gold and silver coin industry exploited seniors through right-wing ads on Facebook. That last piece helped the government shut down one of the worst perpetrators.

Who was the first person you told after getting laid off?

Since this was the early months of Covid, it’s all a bit of a whirl. I was stuck at home and spending long hours on video calls in the bargaining sessions. The first person must have been my husband, I imagine that I yelled to him from my desk. I couldn’t tell anyone at work because we all signed NDAs that we wouldn’t reveal any of the information we saw, and we had to tread carefully because of the ongoing negotiations on the layoff conditions. Only the other people on the bargaining committee knew for a couple of days. That sucked.

You found out about your layoff during a union bargaining session. Can you walk me through how that moment unfolded — what was happening in the negotiations, and how you processed the news while still at the table?

If I'm remembering correctly, I simply saw my name on a spreadsheet that the bargaining committee was shared on. They were axing the team, so I didn’t feel singled out, but despite being fairly prepared for the news, there was some incredulity: the year before, I was selected for the investigative team, which felt like a recognition of my work. We were doing important, impactful reporting. Plus, this was my second full-time job in journalism, and my second layoff. It does make you doubt both yourself and your life choices.

When layoffs became part of the negotiations, what conversations took place about how to handle them?

Once we knew the layoffs were likely, we went back and forth with management on timing, severance calculations, COBRA insurance coverage, work laptops. We were also going back to the other members and getting their concerns and their feedback. This was all happening in early May.

What were the key points related to severance and benefits that the union focused on during negotiations?

Overall, thanks to the union, we were able to get several more weeks of severance for everyone, and prorated severance for people who’d been at the company more than a year, but less than two, and the company to cover our COBRA payments for two extra months. Crucially, we were also able to get our severance with a delay, which for New York employees meant that we could also apply for unemployment benefits, which in 2020 were very favorable. And this was all in addition to the already decent severance package we had, which was implemented several years earlier after management found out about the newsroom's first unionization attempt. It was based on tenure. Also, my colleague who was on a work visa reminded me that the delayed severance option let visa holders extend the period they were allowed to stay in the country.

How did the union keep members informed during the bargaining and layoff process?

My role, from the beginning of the negotiations, had been to write a newsletter, a “shop paper”, from the bargaining meetings to keep the rest of the membership updated. When we were in person, I was illustrating them with little diagrams that I drew in a reporter’s notebook to show how we were sitting. The goal was to help everyone envision the process. I kept doing them from the video calls, just to have some levity. There were memes and jokes, pretty much until we started talking about layoffs. Throughout the entire process, we’d have debrief meetings with the union membership and the Guild rep. People could bring their concerns and questions to those, or via email.

How did switching to remote meetings during the pandemic change the way you bargained? Did it make things easier or harder in unexpected ways?

It was all pretty intense considering we were in the early days of the pandemic, cooped up in our homes, and staring at our screens all the time. Instead of moving conference rooms when we needed to caucus (discuss the latest points of discussion with each other and the union rep and lawyer), we were switching between BlueJeans (RIP, good riddance) and Google Hangouts rooms. There was a learning curve, but as a pretty global newsroom, we were used to meetings via video call already.

For readers unfamiliar with unions, can you describe what a typical bargaining session looks like — how decisions get made, how the committee stays coordinated, and how members stay involved?

We unionized with The NewsGuild of New York, which has shops in many of the city's media organizations. In our unit, there were five bargaining committee members, all women. We had the help of two experienced union reps and a NewsGuild lawyer who guided us through everything. We’d meet to hammer out proposals for the union contract. When we’d convene with management for the negotiations, in the beginning of most sessions, one of the bargaining committee members would read a formal statement with our stance on each proposal. Most of the verbal back and forth with management happened between the union rep and lawyer on our side, and the outside counsel that management had hired on their side. During the bargaining sessions, the committee’s input usually happened after we left the joint room or video call, in private caucus meetings. The actual proposals would go back and forth between the sides in document form, with track changes. As I explained to the membership this was “a process that is very familiar to us, because it’s essentially editing.”

What was the dynamic like with management during bargaining? Was it collaborative, tense, or a mix? Did that affect how the negotiations around layoffs and benefits unfolded?

When we announced our intention to unionize with the NewsGuild, management pretty quickly recognized the unit, which doesn’t always happen. Our overall relationship wasn’t adversarial, especially since the newsroom was quite tight-knit and not strictly hierarchical. That said, it could be very jarring to be on different sides of the table, particularly with management represented by outside counsel who didn’t know us or our work culture, and who could be bullish. Pre-pandemic, when we were bargaining in person and no layoffs were on the horizon, there was a lot less pressure. One of the committee members’ dog, an adorable rescue named Daisy, even attended the bargaining sessions.

How do you see unions playing a role in protecting media workers amid layoffs?

The union didn’t save our jobs. I don’t think anything would have, with the pandemic. But unions have in the past helped negotiate furloughs or buyouts instead of layoffs. For us, it made all the difference in terms of how much bargaining power we had, despite the shitty global situation. Plus, just having people with a ton of experience around layoffs to ask about every little detail was, I think, invaluable. And that earlier unionizing effort that was thwarted by management gave us not only improved severance conditions, but a good starting position this time around.

How have changes in media ownership — like Quartz being sold to Uzabase — affected the culture and labor dynamics in newsrooms you’ve been part of?

Quartz changed ownership twice while I was there, and it created a lot of uncertainty, but honestly, what doesn’t in this industry? The ownership changes definitely accelerated the union efforts. After Atlantic Media sold Quartz in 2018, union organizing in the newsroom picked up again with worries about attrition and restructuring under new ownership. What helped enormously throughout all this turmoil was how close we all were. Five years post-layoff, I’ve heard so many people say they don’t expect to ever have a job where the community feeling is so strong. We’re still all in a Slack with each other. Depressingly, Quartz is now a shell of its former self following two more sales.

Five years later, what are you up to?

I’m working on a book! The severance and lockdowns allowed me some space to develop the idea, and I sold the book last year. It’s called "U Up? A Social History of Online Dating" and it will be published with One Signal/Simon & Schuster in early 2027. I also write a free Substack called The Book Project where I recount everything I’ve learned about nonfiction writing.

PS: Commissioning editors, I would love freelance assignments, especially at the intersection of tech and gender. You can find my work and contact info on my website.