The News
On the most important news day in years, the upper echelons of The New York Times are navigating the impact of an internal contract dispute between one of the paper’s labor unions over issues including in-person work.
On Monday, hundreds of unionized tech employees at The New York Times announced that they were going on strike over a failure to reach a deal for a new contract. The Tech Guild accused management of attempting to stand in the way of measures to ensure pay equity for nonwhite staff (as Semafor previously reported, the Times disputes this), and said that paper has not moved far enough on proposals to increase pay, ensure continuation of remote work, and require management to have strong reasons to fire staff. The Guild also said it has remaining concerns about several other issues, including Times proposals for subcontracting work.
The impact will be immediately felt among election junkies constantly refreshing the Times on election night. In a series of posts on Tuesday, the Times’ chief political analyst Nate Cohn acknowledged that the paper’s famed election needle would likely not be fully functional on election night.
The paper’s union announced the threat of an election day strike in September, with its leadership saying it raised the potential early in order to negotiate with the paper. Susan DeCarava, the president of the New York NewsGuild, told Semafor that the Times had not been willing to negotiate since the strike began, and that at this point “the ball is in their court.”
“The company has had endless opportunities to reach an agreement with us and avert a strike. They did not take those opportunities,” DeCarava said. “The last communication we had with the company, we said: ‘We are available to bargain at any time. You let us know.’ And it has been two days of silence. We don’t have another bargaining date. It is not as if they did not know this was coming. We have been saying from the beginning: ‘We need to get a deal by election week.’”
DeCarava also said that the union was concerned that if it agreed to a contract without sufficient “just cause” language, the paper would attempt to remove similar “just cause” from the Times’ editorial contract.
The union has continued to hold its ground on a refusal to return to in-person work for staff hired for jobs that were initially remote. It noted employees had accomplished the goals of building dynamic products remotely, and that the paper’s own tech management wasn’t in the office, pointing out that the Times’ chief technology officer works remotely.
For its part, Times leadership has attempted to cast the union as selfish over its willingness to disrupt coverage on the most important news day of the year. In a note shared internally on Sunday, Times management said it offered a 2.5 % guaranteed annual wage increase (in addition to merit raises), a minimum 5 %pay increase for promotions, and a $1,000 contract ratification bonus, as well as a series of remote work-friendly opportunities.
“We look forward to continuing to work with Tech Guild to reach a fair contract that takes into account that they are already among the highest paid individual contributors in the Company and journalism is our top priority,” Times SVP Danielle Rhoades Ha said in a statement. “While we respect the union’s right to engage in protected actions, we’re disappointed that colleagues would strike at this time, which is both unnecessary and at odds with our mission.”
In a note to staff on Monday first reported by Semafor, publisher AG Sulzberger said that he found it “troubling that the Tech Guild would try to block this public service at such a consequential moment for our country.”
“Hundreds of you have worked with care and diligence for months — in many cases, years — to provide our fellow citizens with the most trustworthy reporting and results to navigate this fiercely contested election and its aftermath,” he said. “I am sorry that this action by the Tech Guild was designed to put all of this work at risk. We did not need to reach this point. We’re committed to getting to a contract that both rewards our tech colleagues and keeps us on a financially responsible path — one that allows us to maintain our focus on advancing our journalistic mission. I believe our current offer reflects both goals.”
The Guild said it believes in the Times’ mission, and it’s not attempting to stand in the way.
“I don’t know who is calling the shots over there, but frankly the message we’re all getting is that AG would rather burn the house down than pay the people who built it,”DeCarava told Semafor.
“And that is outrageous. And that is a disservice to the readership and a disservice to the workers. It’s so cynical for them to attempt to frame this as somehow we are neglecting our duty. We believe in the mission of the Times, that’s why they do the work that they do. They could go work at a tech company and get paid a hell of a lot more. It’s outrageous that they allowed this to happen.”
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Max’s view
The Tech Guild has accomplished its goal of maximizing attention on an otherwise technical contract negotiation. The union has distracted the paper’s management, and on a day that eyes are trained on news, the guild has made a national news story out of bargaining.
But the strike is a gamble, which DeCarava acknowledged that the Guild had hoped to avoid. If key functions of the New York Times break and wreak havoc on election night, will engaged Times readers blame the paper’s management, or will they believe the staff was unreasonable for not accepting management’s latest proposal? And after election day passes, will the Guild’s moment of maximal leverage may have passed, leaving management believing they’ve called the union’s bluff?
When I first reported on this story in September, the paper’s leadership told me that it was legitimately concerned by the idea that the Guild would go on strike. But it also spent the last two months preparing for the possibility that managers would have to operate the Times on its biggest traffic day without most of their technical staff. Despite protestations from Sulzberger and others in leadership, both the paper and the union seem to agree that the continuation of the strike demonstrates management’s view that it can survive an election day without the unionized tech employees.
In other ways, this week’s strike seems like yet another acknowledgement of the way in which Times leadership is increasingly willing to play hardball with left-leaning staff within the paper. On Sunday, I reported on an internal newsroom meeting in which the paper’s editorial masthead pushed back against criticism of its coverage of Donald Trump from the left. Asked about whether internal and external criticism from liberals influenced the paper’s coverage, executive editor Joe Kahn was resolute. “I don’t think they’re very interested in the hard work that everyone in this room is doing. They’re not interested in genuinely revelatory fact-based reporting that helps people navigate the most polarized issues of our time,” Kahn said of the critics.
During past work stoppages such as the December 2022 walkout, the NewsGuild united the occasionally warring internal factions within the Guild and decisively won the messaging battle among others in the news business. This time around, Times management has also been more willing to go on the PR offensive, sharing some of what it saw as the more esoteric proposals put forward by the Guild over the course of bargaining. While the Guild and management had come to agreements on some of the issues before the strike, the prior existence of the proposals themselves has been enough evidence for skeptics that the union’s demands were unreasonable.
Notable
The Times’s Nate Cohn explained in detail why the needle might fail without technical support.
The Times’s stock is sharply down this week after revenues and subscriptions fell short of expectations, leading to gloating in the New York Post.