For the roughly 100 workers who have recently joined Condé Nast’s “central editorial group,” work has taken a bizarre turn in the past few months.

In November, 94 Condé Union staffers at the glamorous media company behind Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair and Bon Appétit — across editorial, video and audience development — learned that they had been earmarked to be laid off as part of a companywide cost-cutting push. (Workers at Condé Nast titles The New Yorker and Wired belong to separate unions.) But the cuts wouldn’t happen immediately: Because the NewsGuild of New York-affiliated union didn’t yet have its first contract in place, which would include terms and conditions for job cuts, the labor group maintained that the proposed layoffs had to be negotiated as part of the talks over the agreement and the employees remained in limbo at their brands, waiting to learn their fate.

An uneasy deadlock prevailed until January,...