For those wondering, Jacobin purchased Tribune magazine, an old left British publication that was going under back in 2018. Workers at Tribune said that Sunkara promised that if workers took a settlement of only 70% of the back wages that they were owed that he would give them future work after taking over the publication. However, Sunkara in a statement to Payday confirmed that he would not bring the staffers back. Supposedly Sunkara over promised then fucked up and had to reneg as they didn't have the money. Then it came out that the former Tribune owner and editor was doing part of the over promising and Sunkara had never said some of the stuff he was accused of at all, and most of the accusations were between the former Tribune owner and Sunkara behind closed doors and he's denied some of the stuff and there's no evidence whether he said most of it to the staff or the former owner did. IMO the whole thing was somewhat overblown.

Beyond that, there's general controversy on how much they pay contributing writers, but to me that's more of a how much money does jacobin have on hand and the number of articles it publishes per week question.