Condé Nast staffers have found an unlikely ally in actress Anne Hathaway. The Eileen star was on set for a Vanity Fair photoshoot in New York City when she found out that hundreds of employees were staging a 24-hour walkout to protest layoffs.
Hathway was in hair and make-up when a SAG-AFTRA rep notified her of the strike. She immediately got up and walked out of the shoot. A source told Variety, “They hadn’t even started taking photos yet, … Once Anne was made aware of what was going on, she just got up from hair and makeup and left.”
The employee walkout saw over 400 staffers take to the streets outside the Condé Nast offices. The company told workers in November that they planned to lay off 5% of the workforce. That number ballooned to 20% when Condé Nast announced they were laying off 94 unionized staffers. The Condé Nast union began negotiating with the company to save jobs, stop cuts, and offer a more generous severance package, but the publisher wouldn’t meet their demands.
Condé Nast publishes some of the biggest names in the magazine industry, including Vogue, Vanity Fair, and GQ. Hathaway famously played a beleaguered assistant to Runway Magazine Editor-in-Chief Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, who is loosely based on Vogue EIC Anna Wintour.
Ben Dewey, vice chair of the CNE unit of Condé Nast Union, told CNN, “The last nearly three months of fighting for our co-workers on the company’s layoff list has led us to today, … Our 24-hour walkout is about standing firmly behind our colleagues and showing Condé Nast management in the clearest possible way that we will not tolerate their disrespect at the bargaining table over these layoffs. It is time to start bargaining in good faith with us.”
Condé Nast isn’t the only publishing giant under fire. The LA Times is laying off 115 staffers, while Sports Illustrated is also ordering massive layoffs. These changes come off of a brutal year for digital and print media, including Vox Media and Gannett’s mass layoffs last year.
(featured image: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
