With the presidential election season coming to a close tomorrow, one of the country’s most storied news outlets could find its coverage diminished due to a protracted labor dispute. The New York Times and its Tech Guild have been in a years-long saga of negotiations and actions to reach a new contract after the Guild was certified by the National Labor Relations Board in March of 2022. With both sides still at an impasse as of Sunday night, the over 600 workers who make up the union have gone on strike as of this morning. Dozens of them are picketing at the entrance and loading docks of the New York Times building on 8th Avenue.
At issue are a “just cause” clause, which requires that employers have a reason for firing workers (a protection which the news side of the business already enjoys); return-to-office policy; and workers’ concerns regarding pay equity. “We have underpaid workers in our unit,” says Sarah Duncan, a staff software engineer with the Times for six years, and an active member of the Tech Guild, telling La Voce that Black and Latino women “are paid 66 cents to the dollar of white men in our unit.” She also says that these groups have been the first to be disciplined and fired by management since the Guild’s formation. The Times has disputed the Guild’s claims, although Duncan maintains that their analyses are working from the company’s own data.
The disagreement between management and labor at the so-called “paper of record” has been going on since the Guild’s inception, when Times refused to recognize its workers’ organization based on its unit definition – stating, in essence, that the workers do not work together closely enough to qualify – pushing the newly-formed Guild to fight for recognition with the NLRB, which ultimately ruled in its favor. Over the past two years, the Guild has also filed unfair labor practice charges with the government agency over return-to-office mandates from management, a change in the Guild workers’ status which was not negotiated with them. So far the NLRB has found merit in the Guild’s claims.
The Times Tech Guild is the largest union of its kind in the country, including workers from various disciplines – from software engineers to designers to data analysts – responsible for changing, maintaining, and improving the paper’s website. Their work is essential to the function of nearly every aspect of the Times’ online presence, from advertising to the cooking section to games. These last two sections have indeed become vital pillars of the company’s overall offerings, with one staffer telling Vanity Fair last year, jokingly, “Times is now a gaming company that also happens to offer news.” The Times Tech Guild is well aware of their role in keeping these products afloat, as picketing workers today chant, “no contract? No Wordle! No contract? No Spelling Bee!” The outlet’s dynamic online graphics for election information – like its famous “ticker” that sways from one candidate to the other based on the likelihood of victory, or its constantly-updated electoral map – are also at risk without the Guild’s oversight.
According to Duncan, the Tech Guild’s workers take pride in their choice to work at the Grey Lady, claiming that they are working at what she calls a “mission discount,” accepting lower salaries than what would be offered for comparable positions at big American tech firms because “they want to be contributing in a positive way.” In an email to the tech workers from yesterday, the Times’ management stated that they are “disappointed that the Tech Guild leadership is attempting to jeopardize our journalistic mission at this critical time.”
