What if the New York Times‘ famous needle just stood still? What if the counter that had been fine-tuned for months in the run-up to Wednesday, November 6, to enable its millions of readers to follow the result of the US presidential election seized up? On Tuesday afternoon, the indefinite strike launched the day before by the daily’s technology employees continued, just as the election news was about to accelerate.
The New York Times has “a team of nearly 100 Times journalists, engineers, statisticians, data experts and researchers,” who are “collaborating to deliver up-to-the-minute results” on Election Day, the newspaper said on its internet site, which shows no signs of disruption.
“We know this is a hard day to be on strike for our members,” said the union on its X account at 1 pm Paris time on Tuesday, “but we want to be clear: we’re here because of the decisions of New York Times management.” According to the Times Tech Guild, the newspaper’s main union for technology workers, management is refusing to accede to the strikers’ demands for higher wages and improved working conditions.
Negotiations continued until Sunday evening. “The sticking points in recent days were whether the workers could get a “just cause” provision in their contract, which means they can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason; pay increases and pay equity; and return-to-office policies,” said an article on the daily’s website. It also claimed that management has informed all employees by e-mail of its various proposals: “a 2.5% annual wage increase, a minimum 5% pay increase for promotions and a $1,000 ratification bonus.” It added that “the company would maintain its current in-office work requirements of two days a week through June, while allowing employees to work fully remotely for three weeks per year.”
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Notice filed several months ago
According to the union, 95% of its members (600 people – software engineers, product managers, etc. – contributing to the operation of the internet site and application) voted to strike “for fair pay … and flexible remote working,” even though the notice filed several months ago could have prevented this deadlock.
Interviewed at the New York Times Company’s third-quarter earnings call on Monday, CFO William Bardeen said the paper had “a track record of working effectively with unions.” “We’ve known this was a possibility, and have prepared for a range of scenarios,” he added of the labor disruption. These are good times for the newspaper, which has welcomed 260,000 new subscribers in the last three months (after 300.000 new readers in the second quarter). The daily has a total of 11.1 million subscribers, print and digital combined.
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