Bulletins

Netflix trans employees have a list of demands for Wednesday's walkout

Walkout organizers are asking for disclaimers for transphobic content and are not asking Netflix to remove content.

A building with a big Netflix sign over the door

Trans employees at Netflix have released a list of demands ahead of Wednesday's planned walkout

Photo: Netflix

The Netflix trans employee resource group released a list of demands to the company ahead of a planned Wednesday walkout over the controversial Dave Chappelle special "The Closer," asking for increased investment in trans-affirming content and recruitment of trans leaders, adding disclaimers and labels for transphobic content and other changes.

Leaders of the Trans* ERG are planning a walkout Wednesday to protest the company's streaming of "The Closer" and the firing of one of the walkout's organizers, who was dismissed after the company suspected they leaked streaming data about the comedy special.

The demands, first reported by The Verge, do not ask for the removal of the Chappelle special. They do insist that Netflix "acknowledge the harm and Netflix's responsibility for this harm from transphobic content, and in particular harm to the Black trans community," which appears directly aimed at co-CEO Ted Sarandos' statement last week that the company does not believe "The Closer" directly causes real-world harm or violence.

"We are employees, but we are members, too. We believe that this Company can and must do better in our quest to entertain the world, and that the way forward must include more diverse voices in order to avoid causing more harm," the walkout organizers wrote in their statement.

NOTE: Protocol has agreed to be acquired by Axel Springer, whose Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mathias Döpfner, is on the board of Netflix.

Anna Kramer

Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.

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