Insider Staffers Catch Editor-in-Chief Taking Down Pro-Union Flyers

Insider’s global editor-in-chief has been caught tearing down pro-union posters with his face on them, according to a video obtained by the New York Post. Nicholas Carlson was filmed in the compromising position amid the news website’s labor strike.

According to the Post, last Friday Carlson was seen removing the flyers from lamp posts in the Windsor Terrace neighborhood of Brooklyn. The video, which begins with four people confronting him, shows that Carlson was stuffing the flyers into the basket of his Citi Bike.

“Are you recording me right now?” Carlson asks. After one of the people reveals they’re a reporter, Carlson cuts her off with a forced smile and says, “You’re not my reporter.”

“Well, I guess it depends on how you look at it. I work in the newsroom,” she said.

“It’s not my newsroom,” Carlson says before another former Insider employee speaks up.

“I’m not your reporter anymore because you laid me off. And guess what? You laid off everyone on the crypto team,” they fire back. The video ends with Carlson biking away from the group.

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“Nich was alarmed to see the posters – which were aimed at him personally – plastered all over his neighborhood, including around his seven-year-old son’s school,” a spokesperson for Insider told TheWrap. “To be clear, Nich is not responsible for Insider Inc’s selection of healthcare providers. He looks forward to having union members back at work soon.”

A source told TheWrap that Carlson only removed the posters that contained images of his face. These were posted near his home in Brooklyn.

Shortly after the Insider strike started, union members covered Brooklyn’s Windsor Terrace and Park Slope — where both Carlson and Insider CEO Henry Blodget live — with flyers. Two of the flyers read “Have you seen this millionaire CEO?” and “Have you seen this millionaire?” with pictures of Carlson and Blodget, respectively, and goes on to detail the demands of the more than 250 unionized Insider employees. The flyer notes that the strike is demanding Insider “remedy the costly changes” the company “illegally made to our health insurance.” Roughly 400 of these flyers were posted at the time.

On Friday, June 2, hundreds of unionized Insider employees walked out of the office after negotiations fell through. “Management failed to agree on a fair contract that settles our healthcare ULP and pays us what we’re worth,” the Insider Union account tweeted at the time. The same post went on to describe the strike as “indefinite.” The strike started two months after the company announced plans to layoff 10% of its staff.

According to reports, the strike has hit the company hard. Last Friday — the same day Carlson was reportedly caught taking down the flyers — the editor-in-chief wrote to his non-union staffers, “I know you’re tired. I’m tired too.” Since the strike, remaining employees have been faced with punishing workloads. There was even an instance of an author’s rough draft being published as the site tries to churn out more content.

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