Sesame Street non-profit to be hit with layoffs after staff announce union
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CEO to ‘significantly downsize’ Sesame Workshop after more than 200 employees revealed plans to unionize

Sesame Workshop, the non-profit behind , is cutting staff in an effort to “downsize significantly”, its president and CEO, Sherrie Rollins Westin, told employees this week.

The news of layoffs at the organization came just shortly after more than 200 employees at Sesame Workshop revealed  and comes several months after Warner Bros Discovery  for new episodes of Sesame Street, the long-running, beloved children’s program.

In an  on Wednesday, Rollins Westin told employees that Sesame Workshop was not “immune to the current economic challenges inherent to the drastically changing media landscape” and that the end of their distribution deal combined with policy changes affecting their federal funding meant they were “confronted with a perfect storm”.

“These factors, among others, have left us with a significant budget gap that we must solve as we head into the next fiscal year,” she added.

Rollins Westin said that the company’s largest single expense was people and benefits, and that the company therefore must “downsize significantly and make what we hope will be temporary changes to our benefits and bonus program”.

She described the changes as “necessary to ensure that the Workshop is poised to continue to deliver on its mission for years to come”, but “that does not make the human impact of these reductions any less painful”.

On Tuesday,  at Sesame Workshop, including early childhood education experts, fundraisers, facilities staff, producers, paralegals and more, declared their desire to form a union with the Office and Professional Employees International Union.

In a statement that day, the group said that they sought to unionize to ensure that employees could participate in decisions that affect them, including those related to job security and fair pay.

“Sesame Street has taught generations the importance of kindness, fairness, and standing up for what’s right,” Phoebe Gilpin, the senior director of formal learning at Sesame Workshop said in a statement when the group announced their desire to unionize on Tuesday.



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“As the dedicated staff behind this beloved show and so much more, we believe Sesame Workshop should embody those same values by ensuring all workers have a voice in the decisions that affect us. By coming together, we believe we can build a stronger, more supportive workplace that embodies the crucial lessons we teach the world’s children every day.”

The cast and crew of Sesame Street as well as writers were already unionized and have long been union members.
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