Tech staff at New York Times goes on strike, threatens paper’s Election Day coverage

The technology staffers of one of the leading newspapers in the United States, The New York Times, went on strike Monday (Nov 4), just a day ahead of the presidential elections threatening the media’s big coverage of the 2024 presidential race. 

The tech guild of NYT went on a strike just after midnight, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The demands of the guild included fair pay, remote work options and worker protections,

If the strike of the staff continues till tomorrow, this will be the first such strike to take place in the newspaper during the presidential election in the last 60 years, as per the union.

“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,” said a The New York Times spokesperson, while speaking to The New York Post in a statement.

According to the tech guild, the staffer will protest outside the headquarters of the company every day from 9 am Monday (Oct 4).

On September 10, the union voted to authorise the strike of staffers. 

The union appealed to the readers of The New York Times to “honour the digital picket line” and avoid playing popular games owned by the company like Wordle or using the cooking app of Times, as per the Journal.

“We have been sounding the alarm for weeks and cleared our schedules to get this contract done before the election week deadline,” explained Susan DeCarava, president of the NewsGuild of New York. 

“We’re disheartened that the Times is willing to gamble with its election coverage to avoid agreeing to a fair and just contract,” she added. 

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There are more than 600 members in the Tech Guild who work across the engineering, product, design, data and project management departments of the company.

Among these members of the guild, more than 400 of them are engineers which increases concerns that the strike can disrupt the news site’s Election Day coverage.

The company, without the support of the tech staffers, can struggle in fixing bugs which they may encounter on Tuesday (Nov 5) and may also not be able to update content across some of the website’s specialised election coverage tools.

“We’re in one of the most consequential periods of coverage for our readers and have robust plans in place to ensure that we are able to fulfil our mission and serve our readers,” said The New York Times spokesperson, while speaking to The New York Post.

(With inputs from agencies)