New York Times’ tech staff threatens strike during Election Day crunch | Semafor

Leaders at The New York Times are concerned that protracted contract negotiations with the paper’s unionized tech employees could disrupt its election coverage.

The Times Tech Guild — a union of 600 members, largely software engineers, which operates separately from the newsroom union — voted overwhelmingly to authorize a potential strike, Axios reported earlier this week, dangling the possibility that workers could walk off the job during the election in November.

The threat has rattled the paper’s management, including some leaders in the newsroom, which relies heavily on tech. The paper receives peak volumes of traffic around the elections, including on specialty products such as its election needle.

And the threat of a strike on Election Day appears serious: In an internal Guild meeting last month, some Times Tech Guild employees defended the move by saying there are numerous other news sources that people could use around the election if the Times faced serious bugs mid-strike.

“NYT has credible competitors, so it’s not a matter of whether news from trustworthy sources is going to be available,” one staffer said, according to a source familiar with the details of the meeting.

Recent negotiations between different employee unions within the Times have at times been acrimonious and public. Times journalists walked off the job for a day in 2022, while Wirecutter staff staged a five-day strike during the Black Friday shopping season in 2021. But multiple people familiar with the bargaining process told Semafor that negotiations between the Tech Guild and the Times have been particularly contentious as the Guild advocates for a more favorable contract.

Both sides have accused the other of engaging in a lengthy negotiation process that has stretched over two years. The Guild has put forward a number of proposals that management has balked at in totality, including a four-day work week coupled with significant increases in pay, full coverage of all health care premiums for employees and family members, guaranteed RSU grants for all members of the unit, and non-performance-based annual bonuses, all of which the company estimates would cost over $100 million over three years.

Management says that the Guild has bogged down negotiations with what the paper sees as outlandish, even illegal, proposals. As Semafor previously reported, the Guild proposed a ban on scented products in break rooms, unlimited break time, and accommodations for pet bereavement, as well as mandatory trigger warnings in company meetings discussing events in the news.

Times management has been frustrated by proposals that would provide more money for nonwhite staff and others from underrepresented communities to attend conferences, and language that would prioritize non-citizens in the US on visas in the case of layoffs — both of which the paper pointed out couldn’t be fulfilled because they likely violate employment laws.

While the union has withdrawn or reached agreements with the paper on some of these issues, the paper has been alarmed that the union has continued to push for a provision on journalistic integrity that would allow the non-editorial union to have a say in editorial decisions, including the right to request letters to the editor not be published.

A spokesperson for the paper also said that while the union has argued that the strike is a fight for fair wages, the average total compensation of someone in the Tech Guild unit, including salary, bonuses and restricted stock options, is $190,000 — $40,000 more on average than journalists in the Times Guild.

“Since July 2022, bargaining has been focusing on a broad range of non-economic proposals,” Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha told Semafor.

“The Tech Guild recently submitted their economic proposals. We look forward to working with the group to reach a fair contract, that takes into account that they are already among the highest paid in the Company and journalism is our top priority,“ she added.

For its part, the Guild has said that the new contract will help correct pay inequities. The Tech Guild’s recent internal survey said it found significant pay disparities between white employees and nonwhite employees, and between men and women on staff (the paper disputed this, saying the Guild’s methodology was flawed and didn’t compare the pay of employees performing similar work). The Tech Guild is also pushing for “just cause” protections against discipline, which it says the journalists already have, and guardrails around the use of artificial intelligence, including a provision that would prohibit the Times from laying off staff based on evolutions in technology.

The Guild also criticized the paper for continuing to object to proposals that the Guild says it has already withdrawn or resolved, saying it’s “an attempt to distract.” And asked about management’s argument that tech employees were some of the better-compensated staff at the company as a whole, the Guild noted that its members’ salaries pale in comparison to those of executives.

“Times management likes to compare the journalists to the Tech Guild only when it suits them,” a Guild spokesperson told Semafor. “In terms of salaries, wages vary widely across both unions but we are happy to discuss executive compensation relative to workers at the Times.”