• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, 4 hours ago

The last few weeks have seen a lot of cuts in the agency landscape as consolidation and cost-cutting becomes a full-time job in and of itself.  Lost in the headlines was an interesting idea about whether agency employees could and should unionize.  It made me wonder if that were even possible in today’s world.

Starbucks employees were the last significant category of worker that I’m aware of able to unionize, and there are debates on whether that move was successful or not. 

The most immediate challenge I can see for agency employees is AI.  AI gets the blame (or the credit, depending how you want to spin it) for creating efficiency in the advertising world in 2025 and 2026.  When large companies do cuts, they speak to how AI created efficiency, which necessitated a smaller workforce and thus higher margins. 

If the rationale for cuts is that technology can replace workers, how can you expect an entire category of these workers to form a strong enough union that would give them any leverage or power?  Holding companies could simply look at unionization as a way to execute further reductions.

I love agencies, so please don’t get me wrong or read into my tone. I am simply being realistic; I don’t think agency employees have any leverage here.  You can fight back for more PTO and better flexibility for new parents.  You can fight for lower-cost health care.  You can fight for whatever you like, but in an economy that is shaping up to further differentiate the haves and have-nots, it's difficult to gain leverage.  This is further complicated when your bosses would love to have a reason to further replace your role with technology.

Agencies are built on creativity, but that creativity is truly only applied to, at best, 50% of the work.  The other 50% or more is dedicated data, analytics and optimization.  Those are automatable processes. One person can manage the work of 10 with the right tools. 

When I ran agencies, I used to estimate that one person could easily manage about $10 million in spend by themselves.  With the tools available to them today, that number is closer to $100 million.  That only leaves creative and creative thought as the true differentiators, and the percentage of those who are really great at those roles is much smaller.  These people are rare, and they can still command the compensation that keeps them on staff.  The rest are playing for scraps.

So that brings me back to the basic question of whether agency employees can unionize.  I fear the answer is a hard “no.” They can talk about it, but with all the recent layoffs and reductions, there remains a large number of people waiting for a job, and they will step in to whatever role gets vacated by someone unwilling to bend to the needs of the holding company.  As the industry becomes dominated more by technology, traditional agency employees have less a leg to stand on and therefore, not much leverage in the relationship.

Tell me I’m wrong? I  would love to hear the opposing point of view on this one.  The world needs agencies, and I want them to succeed.  It just may be in a different paradigm from what we are all used to today.