The Facebook notification popped onto her screen in April: an invitation to the editorial staff at Gawker Media to “a union meeting about you.” Anna Merlan, a 28-year-old reporter with six months on the job, stared at her laptop, startled.  A union? At a digital media outlet populated mostly by college-educated 20- and 30-somethings? Really?  Gawker’s new employees typically start at $40,000 to $50,000 a year and enjoy generous benefits, its workers say. Its tech-savvy employees came of age in the new economy — about 40 percent rarely, if ever, set foot inside the company’s brick-and-mortar headquarters in Manhattan — and even the office workers often spend the first few hours of their workdays at home, reporting on media and culture, gossip and cars, technology and celebrities from the comfort of their couches.  Which brings us back to Ms. Merlan, sitting in her apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, considering that unexpected invitation. Her first reaction? Surprise. And then?  “I was thrilled,” said Ms. Merlan, who joined the organizing effort spearheaded by Hamilton Nolan, one of Gawker’s senior writers.  Ms. Merlan and her colleagues made headlines this month when they voted by a substantial margin to form a union, a first for a prominent digital media outlet. But the appeal of a union was clear to the employees, whose careers have been buffeted by instability and layoffs during the Great Recession and the unsettled economic recovery that has followed.  On Gawker’s rooftop lounge and in phone interviews last week, several employees of the company’s websites discussed the sense of insecurity that still haunts people in the churning media business, even as the economy improves.  Adam Clark Estes, a 30-year-old writer at Gizmodo, a tech-focused site, talked about losing a writing job after he fell ill and was forced to resign because the company he was working for refused to provide a medical leave.  Clover Hope, a 31-year-old writer at Jezebel, which focuses on women, described seeing more than a dozen co-workers be laid off over a period of several years and feeling as if “you’re just never safe.”  Ms. Merlan said she often thought about her friends from journalism school, who are still struggling to cobble together livings as freelancers. “I’m very privileged,” she said of her full-time position at Jezebel.  A union, she and others argued, would provide a safety net during uncertain times in an uncertain industry.  After all, the road out there is still a bit bumpy. Last year, about 22 percent of recent college graduates were either working part time or unemployed, compared with about 15 percent in 2007, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.  That may be one reason young adults view unions more favorably than other age groups. In March, a national survey of 1,500 adults conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 55 percent of those ages 18 to 29 view unions positively, while 29 percent view them unfavorably.  “None of this was because we were incredibly unhappy or incredibly put upon at Gawker,” Ms. Merlan said. “Everyone agrees that the company is really working well right now. It was more like, ‘Let’s formalize this great thing we have.’ ”  The staff members, who voted 80 to 27 on June 3 to join the Writers Guild of America East, emphasized that their union contract, which will be worked out in the coming months, would look nothing like your grandfather’s.  No pricey pension plans, some argued. No promotions based solely on seniority. No set hours for a given workweek. No prohibitions against layoffs.  “We all looked at unions of the past, and that wasn’t what we wanted,” said Michael Ballaban, 27, a staff writer at Jalopnik, a car site, who ticked off a few of the no-nos. “We all recognize that layoffs can be an essential part of a company’s survival.”  Instead, the organizers focused on points they thought everyone could rally around: the need for good severance pay; salary minimums for each position; annual meetings with supervisors to discuss performance, salary and promotions; and a bar against changes to the company health plans without union approval.  Even so, the debate was intense. Leslie Horn, 27, a staff writer at the sports site Deadspin who voted against the union, said she felt that the process was rushed and she worried that some colleagues were “starry-eyed” about the benefits of unionizing.  “There were a lot of unknowns,” Ms. Horn said, “and unknowns are scary.”  The company’s management eased some concerns. Nick Denton, Gawker’s founder and chief executive, said he was “intensely relaxed” about the union campaign. Tommy Craggs, the company’s executive editor, told Wired that he was “politically, temperamentally and, almost, sentimentally supportive of the union drive.”  The hard part comes next, negotiating a collective bargaining agreement. But for the moment, everyone seems to be taking a deep breath.  Last week, Ms. Merlan was right where she usually is at 8:30 a.m. on a workday, sitting on her bed in her bathrobe, getting her first posts ready for the web.  “We move on Internet time,” she said, “so partly we’re still savoring our victory and partly we’ve moved on to the next thing.”  A version of this article appears in print on June 15, 2015, on page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Striving for a New Kind of Union in a New Economy. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Workers at the digital media outlet made headlines with their decision to form a union, but they say they are simply looking for a way to provide some stability in a turbulent industry.