AI not to blame? Hence the deafening silence from the industry sidelines.
The UK-based Oxford University Press (OUP) has recently made nearly 20 employees redundant in its US office, including the entire North America Design team and the US Content Transformation and Standards team, reports The Bookseller.
Per the report by Matilda Battersby, this move affects 13 members of the OUP USA Guild, a union representing around 150 OUP employees, just three weeks after the union ratified a Collective Bargaining Agreement with the OUP.
A spokesperson for the OUP stated that these changes are part of the company’s efforts to adapt and achieve its mission and future ambitions, and that fewer than 20 “colleagues” were affected, including both Guild and non-Guild members.
The OUP USA Guild, part of the NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America, has filed a grievance, claiming that the redundancies violate the Collective Bargaining Agreement’s jurisdiction article, which protects historic union work from being relocated out of the unit, and the layoffs article.
Employees have been informed that their work is being moved to the UK head office in Oxford.
There are two stand-out points here:
a) That the OUP made this move so soon after signing the CBA, suggests either something serious and unexpected happened in the past few weeks, or the OUP’s sincerity in signing deals is a crock of shit.
b) That there is not even a hint that AI played a role in these redundancy decisions, meaning this was just a normal part of traditional business restructuring activities, where job losses occur due to organisational changes and the relocation of work to other offices.
AI not to blame? Hence the deafening silence from the industry sidelines.
This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsfeed.
