It was a march on the boss, a typical union tactic used to pressure management, this time with unusual consequences.

On Nov. 5, 2025, a group of NewsGuild of New York union members confronted the chief people officer of publishing giant Condé Nast outside his offices in One World Trade Center about recent layoffs and changes to Teen Vogue. A tense exchange ensued, with the executive trying to leave the conversation as union members pressed him to engage — at least some of it captured on video and later leaked to the media.

The next day, four union members — Bon Appétit’s Alma Avalle, Condé Nast Entertainment’s Ben Dewey, Wired’s Jake Lahut and The New Yorker’s Jasper Lo — were fired and five more union members were suspended for conduct that “violated company policies” and “behavior that crosses the line into targeted harassment and disruption of business operations” according to the company. The union, in turn, deemed the firings illegal and began advocating on behalf of the terminated staffers, calling them “the Fired Four.”

Now, nearly half a year later, the union has reached a settlement with Condé Nast over the discipline, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. As part of the deal, the status of three of the four workers was changed from fired to being allowed to resign as active employees. They were each given nearly two years’ pay and furnished with positive letters of recommendation.

The fourth fired worker, Lahut, was a probationary worker at the time of the exchange — meaning that he was a recent hire who had not been working at Wired long enough to be covered by the union agreement’s “Just Cause” language. He was offered a “lesser” settlement of his own, per the union, but chose to pursue the case through an unfair labor practice charge case at the National Labor Relations Board.

As for the suspended workers, the settlement deal provides them with backpay for the days they were suspended and their disciplinary records have been erased.

Though the company did not admit fault as part of the deal (and neither did the union), the NewsGuild of New York framed the settlement as a victory. “[Condé Nast] wanted to send a message that if you potentially step out of line according to some random boss’s assessment of what that means, that you could be fired,” NewsGuild of New York president Susan DeCarava said in an interview. “This outcome is a clear repudiation of that. It’s a repudiation of the idea that people’s right to take direct collective action isn’t protected under federal law. It clearly is.”

In a statement, a Condé Nast spokesperson said that after an arbitration process began, “we reached a mutual, amicable agreement so that all parties can move forward constructively. In doing so, neither party admits to any wrongdoing or liability.”

Lo, a former fact-checker at The New Yorker who was one of the fired union members, called his feelings about the settlement “complicated.” He explained, “The company did something so egregious, but you can see from the terms of the settlement that they are admitting in so many ways that they’re shouldering the blame. They’re shouldering the blame as much as they’re willing to.”

Post-Condé Nast, Lo is planning on attending the Middlebury Language Schools this summer to work on his Mandarin while freelancing.

Avalle, meanwhile, called the settlement a “a win for the entirety of the Condé Nast Union, New Yorker Union, the NewsGuild and labor moment to say workers have a right to talk to their bosses as equals.” Avalle is currently running an independent literary magazine with a friend, applying for staff jobs here and there and planning on staying involved with the union.

For Lahut, the fight with Condé Nast isn’t over. He says he was one week shy of his probationary status ending when he was fired. And National Labor Relations Board cases can take a long time to be decided, especially in 2026. “I’m prepared to wait months, years if I have to. I mean, I think that’s potentially realistic,” he says.

In the meantime, he’s continuing to report freelance stories and has a contract job working as a breaking news editor at Sherwood News. But he keeps thinking about the day his job was terminated: That morning, he represented Wired in a press appearance on MSNBC and was scheduled to do another later that night. He first got an inkling that something might be wrong through an MSNBC staffer, who he says told him Condé Nast had pulled him off the subsequent appearance.

“I really don’t understand how standing in a hallway and asking questions is enough to merit what’s happened here,” he says.