Condé Nast employees use Met Gala work to highlight unionization effort

Employees of magazine publisher Condé Nast seized upon Monday night’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual gala benefiting the Costume Institute to push for unionization rights.

Condé Nast employees announced they had unionized in March. They have since been calling on the company to voluntarily acknowledge their organization.

Ahead of the glitzy annual affair, which is organized by the Condé Nast-owned fashion magazine Vogue, employees penned a statement saying, “the Met Gala’s sparkle comes from our sweat.”

“We’ve been waiting for union recognition for over a month,” reads an Instagram post from Condé United. “We deserve to be fairly compensated for our around the clock work, and we deserve to do the work we’re proud of without fear of losing our jobs, working without healthcare, or working overtime without pay.”

The employees running the Instagram account previously posted a summary of the roles Condé Nast employees play at the exclusive event benefit, and at what cost.

“Making the Met Gala takes hours of extra work from the entire @voguemagazine team, not to mention other employees throughout the company. Yet Condé believes that prestige is enough to cover the incredible amounts of unpaid labor,” a post from over the weekend reads.

If approved, the union would cover more than 500 editorial, video and production workers across all Condé Nast’s brands that have yet to be covered by a guild.

In a previous statement to The Hill, the company said it was aware of the unionization efforts and plans “to have productive and thoughtful conversations with them over the coming weeks to learn more.”