Celebrate the 7th Anniversary of the Founding of Payday Report

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People often wonder how I came up with the name Payday Report. It happened on August 12th, 2015 when I was illegally fired from Politico for union organizing.

On that day, when I told my union rep Bruce Jett, a Black veteran of the 1991 New York Daily News told me “Today is Payday!”. We knew that my firing was illegal and I was about to get paid quite handsomely for the pain that I was undergoing.

Later that evening, a bunch of us celebrated the firing, and I resolved to use the money that I would win to start a small little labor publication. Eventually, I decided to name it “Payday Report” to celebrate what happened that day

(You can read a full account of the early days of the digital media unionization movement and what occurred at POLITICO here)

Many people thought we would never be able to organize Politico, but I ALWAYS believed that we would come back and win and now we have a union there. It took 6 years and several attempts to eventually organize Politico, but we did it.  

For many years, I have celebrated my illegal firing by taking a few days off to reflect on it as a milestone in my life. This year, it feels soooooo special knowing that we won after a long hard fight that took 6 years. Few things have given me more confidence in our ability to win than watching that union drive. 

The win gives me more confidence that Payday will be the publication that I dreamed it will be that day when I was fired at Politico more 7 years ago. Through solidarity and crowdfunding, we can change labor journalism. It will be tough, but so was the union drive at Politico.

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Thanks again for all the support & suggestions. 

Love & Solidarity, 

Melk