> Women, who make up 41% of the Tech Guild, earn 12% less on average than men
Such statistics are meaningless without more context. For example, are women over-represented in entry level positions? Do they work the same hours? the same overtime? And so forth.
Articles that present such statistics are pushing propaganda.
If we look at past times these things are brought up; almost certainly not. Often things like part-time vs. full time aren't considered or amount of overtime hours worked (for hourly jobs).
It's funny, every hedge fund and tech startup I've ever worked at since roughly 2001 very proudly boasts about how they pay women more than the men.
But as my career goes on into the years I find that I'm working with less women and less minorities and not more. Despite the best of efforts...
If I were to look for evidence though, I would point things squarely at the interview process... In the past if you could operate a computer you were hired and assumed you would figure it out. Nowadays it's much more about fitting a certain narrative that's largely down to socioeconomic factors... I don't think I've ever worked with someone in tech who went to an HBCU, but lots of people who were token at NYU, Yale, etc...
This line of questioning is often brought up in response to pay gap conversations. Universal trends do not explain individual data points, but in general, studies do seem to indicate that pay gaps are real.
If not, then that's also an equity problem. If the "dog jobs" are mostly offered to women and minorities, that should also be called out as a problem for employers to solve.
The bit you’re quoting is one of the complaints people have raised. It is not the only complaint, and given the near unanimous support for the strike it is not even likely the biggest complaint. They also mention the company handing out PIPs like candy and fears from automation, problems I think many people on this site can sympathize with.
A lot of comments on this thread seem to feel like the “why” of this matter is settled with an answer of “The men have more experience and are working higher-level jobs. Therefore, they receive higher pay.”
This is not the equilibrium we are aiming for as a society, and the matter is not settled here.
The point of these measurements is not to demand that women are paid more for less work. The point is for us to keep asking “why”, and not just stop after the first one.
“Why are women earning less at the New York Times?”. Maybe the company is just top-heavy with men in leadership roles. This has been floated in this thread as a common cause.
“Why are there more men in leadership roles?”. A few commenters have shared anecdotes of having far more men in their recruiting process. More men applying would help explain more experienced men higher up in the company.
“Why are there more men than women applying?”. We’re getting closer to root causes now. In software engineering, for example, there are just more men in the workforce.
“Why are there more men in the workforce?”. It gets more difficult, but also more important, to investigate the answer at these lower levels. Girls Who Code and similar initiatives are tackling this behemoth cultural problem. It will take years to see the effect of their work, but their success breeds hope that someday, the gap in this New York Times statistic will close a little.
At any of these levels, a company can step in and try and correct the natural bias in their hiring or development pipeline. That is, of course, the most sensitive topic for a lot of us here. Such initiatives should have buy-in from the workforce, and there’s an implication here that the (unionized) workers of NYT do support some kind of intervention.
Their choice, and above all the very measurement of a wage gap, doesn’t need to be threatening to anybody here. It will forever be important to track this number even if we “feel” like the explanations are simple. It doesn’t represent some kind of action the company should be forced to take. It measures where we are on every level of asking “why?”.
the editorial bias from management of NYT has always been skeptical of Google and Facebook and perhaps all of big tech because big tech was a threat to their business. Most newspapers in the US have been hollowed out because of social media and the tech industry, NYT ironically has not because they hired a real in house tech team that has kept their paper relevant.
But that doesn't mean they like paying their tech workers any more than any other management. It's just about money. Big tech is a threat to management's profits, just like workers demanding better salaries is a threat to management's profits.
> Most newspapers in the US have been hollowed out because of social media and the tech industry,
They've been declining ever since radio and TV started doing news broadcasts, early to mid 20th century. Internet tech has played a role too, but the whole newspaper industry should have seen the writing on the wall several generations ago.
Isn’t it a little ironic that NY Times, and most east coast media, is very anti big tech and pro union while their own employees are protesting because of low wages?
Who are they to judge how big tech treats their employees when they pay their own so poorly?
> Who are they to judge how big tech treats their employees when they pay their own so poorly?
Being anti tech has nothing to do with salary, it’s centered on what big tech is doing.
The people actually writing articles tend to be in Unions which may help explain their pro Union stances. Both from below and management being concerned with union relations.
The NY Times is pro-union and anti-big-tech in large part because its journalists are unionized and tech platforms disintermediate unions. The workers that produce articles and create the newsroom culture have a conflict of interest that affects its editorial slant. There is also the factor that tech threatens the ad revenue of traditional news media.
Their current CEO, Meredith Kopit Levien, is about as let-them-eat-cake as they come. She was doing a town hall years back when they were forcing everyone to “hotel” desks so they could lease out more floors of their HQ in Times Square, when she mentioned she’s giving up one of her two offices in the building but it’s ok because one was “mostly for shoes, anyway”.
This is a journalism industry problem, not a journalism content problem. Journalists trying to get paid more doesn't exclude Big Tech from criticism it deserves
A lot of the East Coast media, like the Times, has a lot of downwardly mobile people in them from wealthy or upper middle class families. And they aren't any longer in many cases and they are full of resent and bitterness that their turn has been looked over. That they aren't getting what "they deserve" as they did "everything right" like join a bunch of clubs in high school or w/e and go to college and get a degree that shows the world they are the continuation of their family legacy. But it's not there any longer and there's jealousy of of the new middle class that tech has built.
...Just because you're being payed absurdly doesn't legitimize your work any either. There's a lot of work that's aimed at getting done where the big fat paycheck is considered "STFU and do what you're told. with what we're paying you, we own you."
Just because you're potentially paid 500k to essentially implement the basis of metadata leakage and privacy compromise on scales that previous century actual dictators couldn't even reasonably dream of does not make the work of implementing it more "legitimate". It just makes it easier to attract people who value naterial comforts right now over safety from systemic abuse later. It's all tradeoffs.
Someone'll pay you well to do ultimately horrible things, and make it sound like you're doing everyone a favor.
Juniors, take note. You set the bar on the hell you'll be trapped in down the road. Always, always, be suspect.
>> Isn’t it a little ironic that NY Times, and most east coast media, is very anti big tech and pro union while their own employees are protesting because of low wages?
It is more than a little ironic that the NY Times complains about a "lack of diversity" in silicon valley, when practically the entire NY Times senior staff are generationally rich white people who live in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
There are >64 million Hispanics living in the United States, yet not a single one on the NYT exec team. They have 1 token asian, 1 token black person. Half the staff is Jewish. Yet they are complaining about diversity in Silicon valley.
As a person of asian origin, there is probably no way I can get a non-crappy role at the NY Times, yet silicon valley offers enough of a meritocracy that I can get a job there without having a rich uncle.
Remember, when the establishment complains about diversity, they are actually complaining about themselves losing control to the general population. That is why colored people in executive roles in SV is so scary to newspapers.
That lists the pay discrepancy but doesn't mention if there are literally any factors for the disparity such as role, responsibilities, performance, etc. It just mentions race, which gives me absolutely no usable information to give credibility.
If we are to assume black and women workers have historically been missing entirely from tech then the efforts of recent initiatives would bring fresh people in? Those newer people wouldn't have the same length of professional experience but the expectation is to be paid equal?
Put another way if the CEO is white and they make 50m and you have two employees, one black and one white who each make 50k, the average for white workers would be skewed higher? Before anyone replies "um actually, it's only workers within the guild, the CEO isn't included", okay, but does everyone in the guild have the same job title, experience, and responsibilities?
As an aside, they've structured that website like trash. Yes, I'd love to click a link to see the pay study which is just duplicated below the link without any additional information. It's like they purposely are trying to say nothing but be loud.
In my experience, Mismanagement, both in personnel and compensation, seems to be commonplace, as corporations seek to lower costs in response to our changing economy. Corporations looking to find an advantage may shortchange employees, overwork them, and not train managers but rather expect everybody to "just work well together", deflecting responsibility.
Unionizing provides a relief valve where unions can strongly argue for better working environments. The individual no longer has to have a half-baked idea and be afraid to raise it, for fear of retribution or simply for fear of being proven to be an impotent cog mating to a very large wheel.
If you read books from the early 1900s (Radium Girls, Rocket Boys, Seabiscuit), it's painfully obvious to see how incredibly exploitative industries can become (literally working people to death) without something like a union to check corporate greed against worker well-being.
It's a fine balance though. Unions are organizations very similar to companies and can fall victim to the same sins as exploitative companies (or worse, like in the 60s when the Teamsters Union became controlled by the mafia and was used to further organized crime goals)
> it's painfully obvious to see how incredibly exploitative industries can become (literally working people to death) without something like a union to check corporate greed against worker well-being.
I don't think the missing mechanism is unions, I think it's an aggressive monopoly-busting government. What we're talking about is an industry outstrippinng it's competition and harming people - basically the definition of a monopoly.
Totally free markets are self destructive. Well regulated free markets are the greatest driving force for human quality of life we've found.
Part of the problem with unions is still due to anti-union laws which effectively locks existing unions into place and not allowing members to be like "Nah fuck yall, ill make my own union without you corrupt cats in charge."
It should also be painfully obvious that, during those times, the alternative — subsistence agriculture — was much worse, and people working in factories no longer starved. The industrial revolution, AKA "greed", has ended starvation and slavery, so when socialists of late 1800s or early 1900s talk of exploitation, that should raise an eyebrow.
Unions are not similar to companies because they don't compete on the free market. For this reason, much like all state-funded institutions, unions are much more prone to corruption.
If that was really all unions did that would be great.
Unfortunately, unions also do things like
* keep bad police in their jobs
* keep bad teachers in schools
* add massive costs by protecting positions by forcing specific rolls. "You're not allowed to carry monitor into a trade show for your indie game booth - only union members and specifically union members who's title includes -equipment carrier- are allowed to carry equipment". "You're not allowed to plugin your monitor for your indie game booth - only union electricians area allowed to plugin equipment". Those are actual examples I've run into. I've heard of many many others for different industries. You can't write a unit test, only a unit-tester can write a unit test (made up example)
Is it not possible for "proper" management, rather than mismanagement, to result in downsizing a bloated org that over-hired, or lowering compensation in an employee-friendly hiring environment where a bunch of senior employees where laid off across the industry?
Both of those goals seek to lower costs, and goes counter to the interests of the union without being considered "mismanagement"
Absolutely. This is the worst job market for tech workers in probably 20 years. Many employed in tech are hoping to keep their job, let alone bargain for higher wages and remote work.
Hard to imagine this effort having as much leverage if it were to happen after the election.
In fact I'd wager that one of the reasons for the urgency on the workers' part is to lock up contracts before the election in order to prevent mass layoffs right after.
I'm not entirely clear that going into a potentially rough storm is a great time to rock the boat? Curious if you have any studies that show this is a good time?
Agreed that getting a contract sooner than later has to be a good idea. I'm actually surprised they have gone as long as they have with no contract.
It is not clear to me whether going on a strike is a good idea for the New York Times tech workers:
Since media is not a sector that has high margins, when a company gets under pressure to have to increase the salaries (e.g. by strikes), the management better starts to analyze how you can reduce the number of, in this case, tech workers because with thin margins, budging in these negotiations is much more dangerous for the mere existence of the business than if the margins are high.
Instead of going on strike, it would in my opinion be a better idea for the tech workers to look for a better paid job in an industry with higher margins.
> Instead of going on strike, it would in my opinion be a better idea for the tech workers to look for a better paid job in an industry with higher margins.
If they alternative is quiting, than they don't have very much to lose by going on strike.
That's only true if you are guaranteed to find another job that pays at least as much as that one you are striking against before running out of savings money, otherwise it's always best to look for career movements while still employed.
If I were looking for jobs, I wouldn't want it on my resumé that I came from a company whose workers just voted to strike - even if I wasn't a member of the union. I would not want it to be assumed that I might be a troublemaker in a not great job market.
Presumably, the tech workers at NYT have a better idea of if striking is a good idea, as they’re employed there and have better visibility into motives and margins
Maybe they want to stay in news media. When I worked at The Atlantic, a lot of my coworkers were highly motivated by the subject matter of their work and perceived quality of their newsroom.
This doesn't seem like a purely economical strike. It's not a coincidence that the most unionized tech workforce in the country is the New York Times, an organization that is fundamentally pro-union in its politics. When the organization as a whole is consistently delivering a pro-union message, doesn't it just make sense that the employees would tend to be ideologically pro-union?
> the New York Times, an organization that is fundamentally pro-union in its politics
No, it is definitely not. NYT is neoliberal. Don't confuse the cultural left with the economic/social/fiscal left. NYT is not at all pro-labor. Other people have discussed this extensively in the comments below.
> the management better starts to analyze how you can reduce the number of, in this case, tech workers because with thin margins
This happens anyway, regardless of how well a company is doing. Tech has been laying off workers with record profits and very high margins. But I trust the workers to have better insight than you (or me) of whether the strike is beneficial for them or not in the long run.
Let’s all remember that the vast majority of programmers are not mathematicians, nor logicians, nor authors, we are tradespeople. And you’ll notice that tradespeople in almost every other industry unionize.
I've always thought that if a union is good enough for LeBron James and Tom Brady and Mike Trout, it's good enough for anyone. The same reason professional athletes have a union and would not dream of doing without one still fully applies to everyone else.
I agree with you, but consider the "outplaying your contract" and bad blood via arbitration problem we see in more and more (American) sports. Tech jobs aren't like being a plumber, one can't exactly say you need X amount of hours to be ready to do something, even only in the eyes of the law.
Not all programmers have high comp, and high comp are extremely dependent on market conditions and skills. And a programmer career can be rather short too due to ageism. Doctors have a much more stable and predictable compensation.
Not even close to comparable. Becoming a doctor takes many more years than becoming a programmer. They have legal ramifications if they make mistakes instead of “teehee oopsie all our data leaked sorry”. The vast majority of programmers have a bachelor’s degree or lower. It is actually laughable to me that you would compare programmers to doctors.
In any case, we should aspire to follow the model of unions and not cartels.
Most tradespeople are not unionized. Even the most highly unionzed trade - electricians - are only 1/3rd unionized. The most unionized jobs are not tradespeople, they're teachers and police officers. https://smartestdollar.com/research/the-most-unionized-occup...
A lot (not prepared to say majority) of tech workers aren't programmers. If you spend your day plugging services together through standard interfaces, that's very much akin to plumbing, just without the occupational hazards.
> Kathy Zhang, a senior analytics manager with The Times and the guild's unit chair, said, "Management has really dragged its feet when it comes to bargaining," between the union formation and now.
Maybe tangential, but I would have guessed people managers were not eligible to be a member of the union. Does anyone know how eligibility is determined?
Generally anyone below director level makes sense imho.
The biggest advocate of pay rises and improvements to conditions is often the line level managers and those one step up from the line level managers. If this is a typical corporate job title this is a manager of line level managers. He probably has quarterly 1:1s or at least office hours supporting those at the lowest levels. It’s not like you become a line level manager, accept the 20% pay rises and suddenly change your outlook on everything. You’re never that far removed. Advocacy is important for management so I have no issues with this.
There's been a sucessful corporate ruse to make line level managers seem above line level workers and make line level works side against line level mamagers, while both sides are of the same labor class.
Kathy isn’t a people manager, the Times just has confusing titles for its data folks. Product managers and project managers likewise often have “manager” in their titles without being people managers. No one with direct reports is allowed to be a member of the union!
The NLRA doesn't protect "supervisors", which is mostly anyone who can hire/fire/discipline/etc. They technically are still able to unionize, but there is literally nothing stopping a company firing them for it.
Good for them. More workers need to be understanding just how much they are being exploited by their leadership and demand a more equitable piece of the pie.
So, what's reasonable? Would giving everyone a $65k pay raise and zeroing out the profit for the company be correct? Would that put them close to what they'd get if they worked in big tech? ( https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28Apple%2C+Meta%2C+GOO... ). We're dealing with very different numbers there.
If you want the Union's opinion, their strike demands are the place to look.
If you want my opinion, what you've described would be a start. Or at least the workers there should be parties to a decision on whether that's the right decision. I'd consider lowering executive compensation as well. But there's many ways to achieve a balance within an organization that benefits the product and the workers.
Absolute hogwash. The existence of people being exploited more does not mean that people being exploited less are not being exploited.
Like, yes, these workers are probably in better conditions than many global workers. But that doesn't mean the NYT isn't exploiting them.
Also, consider showing some solidarity -- these people are workers, and have more in common with other workers than they have different. Support their strike, and expect them to support yours. Or at the very least support them advocating for better working conditions and expect they will support you in improving your workplace.
How does one refrain from crossing the virtual picket line of such a strike? Is it to not do business with any company with this union's workers, for the duration?
Continuing to do business with a company whose employees are striking isn't "crossing the picket line". Crossing the picket line means undermining a strike directly by supply labor when organized labor is using a labor embargo as leverage. To avoid crossing the NYT picket line, don't write for the NYT.
Yup in most cases striking employees don't want the end consumer to boycott the company, because ultimately it hurts them as well. Picketing is done to (1) raise awareness and (2) discourage non-union/temporary labor from replacing them during the strike.
I think at least these days, usage of the term can include customers. For example, this from the University of Maine's Bureau of Labor Education: "Customers may refuse to cross a picket line and picketers have the right to ask customers to honor their picket but should not intimidate, block customer access, disparage a company’s product, or say anything that is untrue or casts the product in a false or misleading light."
Or this, from the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee: "Lastly, customers also have the right to honor the picket line and arguably have the most important role in influencing employers’ decisions, outside of the workers themselves."
Or this, from NYT writer: "Having walked a picket line before, I try not to cross anyone else’s. The W and its parent company, Marriott, know there are lots of people like me. So why hadn’t they disclosed in advance what would greet me upon arrival?"
crossing the picket line is not the same thing as scabbing and as a phrase often can apply to consumers.
I believe the NYT guild has asked ppl to pause reading NYT in the past, however in many many cases the unions do not want a consumer boycott. so it really depends
Sometimes unions will call for a consumer boycott during a strike, but sometimes they won't. Unsure what the NYT tech union is asking for (or not asking for) at the moment.
And I can see why it can make sense to not call for a boycott. If workers are on strike, but consumer demand remains strong and their needs aren't being met, it puts pressure on management. Like if mail drivers go on strike, everyone stops getting deliveries, and suddenly it's obvious how critical those drivers are.
They're not actually on strike yet, and they haven't requested any action from customers. Sometimes a union actually wants customers to behave as normal, because typical customer behavior in concert with a work stoppage will apply the most pressure to management. Sometimes they ask customers to boycott, to apply financial pressure. Sometimes, though rarely, a union will ask customers to threaten to divest or cancel accounts.
The best way to make sure you're in step with what the union is asking for from customers is to keep an eye on whatever they seem to be using to communicate the most - in this case, it seems to be their twitter: https://x.com/NYTGuildTech. I think it's fair to assume that if they have any requests for customers of NYT, they'll put them there.
I remember during the screenwriters guild strikes in the Movie and TV industry, many writers were advocating _not_ to boycott movies/TV. Mainly in order to show that the people still wanted to watch the media that these people were writing for and creating, so that the strike held more legitimacy: we are needed to produce more content for your business.
I suppose sometimes it makes sense to boycott, but not all the time.
I don't know why you are being down voted, this is a fair question.
The answer is: don't make assumptions, listen to what the workers want. If they call for a boycott, boycott in support. If they say, "don't boycott", please don't encourage others to boycott.
Plenty in the media industry make money from engagement, and they might not want you to stop engaging! The writers strike, for instance, said keep watching but consider not producing content that builds off our content. Plenty of podcasts switched to other media for the duration.
Watch for public statements from the union. A striking unit will generally inform the general public if they are looking for any show of support. No need to assume that a boycott is desired!
Readit News
https://www.nyguild.org/post/new-york-times-tech-guild-votes...
I wonder how other news outlets will cover this, if at all. They’re probably afraid others will get the same idea.
> * Black women and Hispanic or Latina women, who make up just over 6 percent of the Tech Guild, make 33% less than white men in the unit
> * Black workers, who make up 7 percent of the union, earn 26% less than white workers
Do they work equivalent jobs with equivalent experience?
Such statistics are meaningless without more context. For example, are women over-represented in entry level positions? Do they work the same hours? the same overtime? And so forth.
Articles that present such statistics are pushing propaganda.
But as my career goes on into the years I find that I'm working with less women and less minorities and not more. Despite the best of efforts...
If I were to look for evidence though, I would point things squarely at the interview process... In the past if you could operate a computer you were hired and assumed you would figure it out. Nowadays it's much more about fitting a certain narrative that's largely down to socioeconomic factors... I don't think I've ever worked with someone in tech who went to an HBCU, but lots of people who were token at NYU, Yale, etc...
https://www.epi.org/publication/what-is-the-gender-pay-gap-a...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/07/01/racial-ge...
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/women-of-color-and-...
> Two-thirds of the members fired by New York Times management since the Times Tech Guild formed have been from underrepresented groups.
This is not the equilibrium we are aiming for as a society, and the matter is not settled here.
The point of these measurements is not to demand that women are paid more for less work. The point is for us to keep asking “why”, and not just stop after the first one.
“Why are women earning less at the New York Times?”. Maybe the company is just top-heavy with men in leadership roles. This has been floated in this thread as a common cause.
“Why are there more men in leadership roles?”. A few commenters have shared anecdotes of having far more men in their recruiting process. More men applying would help explain more experienced men higher up in the company.
“Why are there more men than women applying?”. We’re getting closer to root causes now. In software engineering, for example, there are just more men in the workforce.
“Why are there more men in the workforce?”. It gets more difficult, but also more important, to investigate the answer at these lower levels. Girls Who Code and similar initiatives are tackling this behemoth cultural problem. It will take years to see the effect of their work, but their success breeds hope that someday, the gap in this New York Times statistic will close a little.
At any of these levels, a company can step in and try and correct the natural bias in their hiring or development pipeline. That is, of course, the most sensitive topic for a lot of us here. Such initiatives should have buy-in from the workforce, and there’s an implication here that the (unionized) workers of NYT do support some kind of intervention.
Their choice, and above all the very measurement of a wage gap, doesn’t need to be threatening to anybody here. It will forever be important to track this number even if we “feel” like the explanations are simple. It doesn’t represent some kind of action the company should be forced to take. It measures where we are on every level of asking “why?”.
You are reading this on another news outlet!
Last year, NYT tech workers also had a strike over return -to-office, as covered by Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-york-times-tech-workers...
But that doesn't mean they like paying their tech workers any more than any other management. It's just about money. Big tech is a threat to management's profits, just like workers demanding better salaries is a threat to management's profits.
They've been declining ever since radio and TV started doing news broadcasts, early to mid 20th century. Internet tech has played a role too, but the whole newspaper industry should have seen the writing on the wall several generations ago.
Who are they to judge how big tech treats their employees when they pay their own so poorly?
Being anti tech has nothing to do with salary, it’s centered on what big tech is doing.
The people actually writing articles tend to be in Unions which may help explain their pro Union stances. Both from below and management being concerned with union relations.
The journalists (and tech workers) don't decide their own salary.
You conflated "they" as both management and the people being managed, to make it "ironic."
Just because you're potentially paid 500k to essentially implement the basis of metadata leakage and privacy compromise on scales that previous century actual dictators couldn't even reasonably dream of does not make the work of implementing it more "legitimate". It just makes it easier to attract people who value naterial comforts right now over safety from systemic abuse later. It's all tradeoffs.
Someone'll pay you well to do ultimately horrible things, and make it sound like you're doing everyone a favor.
Juniors, take note. You set the bar on the hell you'll be trapped in down the road. Always, always, be suspect.
almost all modern places that unionize have a liberal/left-leaning customer base the company is afraid of losing
It is more than a little ironic that the NY Times complains about a "lack of diversity" in silicon valley, when practically the entire NY Times senior staff are generationally rich white people who live in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Here is the exec staff: https://www.nytco.com/company/people/ "Filter by executive"
There are >64 million Hispanics living in the United States, yet not a single one on the NYT exec team. They have 1 token asian, 1 token black person. Half the staff is Jewish. Yet they are complaining about diversity in Silicon valley.
As a person of asian origin, there is probably no way I can get a non-crappy role at the NY Times, yet silicon valley offers enough of a meritocracy that I can get a job there without having a rich uncle.
Remember, when the establishment complains about diversity, they are actually complaining about themselves losing control to the general population. That is why colored people in executive roles in SV is so scary to newspapers.
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If we are to assume black and women workers have historically been missing entirely from tech then the efforts of recent initiatives would bring fresh people in? Those newer people wouldn't have the same length of professional experience but the expectation is to be paid equal?
Put another way if the CEO is white and they make 50m and you have two employees, one black and one white who each make 50k, the average for white workers would be skewed higher? Before anyone replies "um actually, it's only workers within the guild, the CEO isn't included", okay, but does everyone in the guild have the same job title, experience, and responsibilities?
As an aside, they've structured that website like trash. Yes, I'd love to click a link to see the pay study which is just duplicated below the link without any additional information. It's like they purposely are trying to say nothing but be loud.
In my experience, Mismanagement, both in personnel and compensation, seems to be commonplace, as corporations seek to lower costs in response to our changing economy. Corporations looking to find an advantage may shortchange employees, overwork them, and not train managers but rather expect everybody to "just work well together", deflecting responsibility.
Unionizing provides a relief valve where unions can strongly argue for better working environments. The individual no longer has to have a half-baked idea and be afraid to raise it, for fear of retribution or simply for fear of being proven to be an impotent cog mating to a very large wheel.
It's a fine balance though. Unions are organizations very similar to companies and can fall victim to the same sins as exploitative companies (or worse, like in the 60s when the Teamsters Union became controlled by the mafia and was used to further organized crime goals)
I don't think the missing mechanism is unions, I think it's an aggressive monopoly-busting government. What we're talking about is an industry outstrippinng it's competition and harming people - basically the definition of a monopoly.
Totally free markets are self destructive. Well regulated free markets are the greatest driving force for human quality of life we've found.
Unions are not similar to companies because they don't compete on the free market. For this reason, much like all state-funded institutions, unions are much more prone to corruption.
Unfortunately, unions also do things like
* keep bad police in their jobs
* keep bad teachers in schools
* add massive costs by protecting positions by forcing specific rolls. "You're not allowed to carry monitor into a trade show for your indie game booth - only union members and specifically union members who's title includes -equipment carrier- are allowed to carry equipment". "You're not allowed to plugin your monitor for your indie game booth - only union electricians area allowed to plugin equipment". Those are actual examples I've run into. I've heard of many many others for different industries. You can't write a unit test, only a unit-tester can write a unit test (made up example)
Both of those goals seek to lower costs, and goes counter to the interests of the union without being considered "mismanagement"
NYT should be highly motivated to negotiate a deal as soon as possible.
Hard to imagine this effort having as much leverage if it were to happen after the election.
Any sources for this? Asking out of curiosity—not disagreement.
Agreed that getting a contract sooner than later has to be a good idea. I'm actually surprised they have gone as long as they have with no contract.
Since media is not a sector that has high margins, when a company gets under pressure to have to increase the salaries (e.g. by strikes), the management better starts to analyze how you can reduce the number of, in this case, tech workers because with thin margins, budging in these negotiations is much more dangerous for the mere existence of the business than if the margins are high.
Instead of going on strike, it would in my opinion be a better idea for the tech workers to look for a better paid job in an industry with higher margins.
If they alternative is quiting, than they don't have very much to lose by going on strike.
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No, it is definitely not. NYT is neoliberal. Don't confuse the cultural left with the economic/social/fiscal left. NYT is not at all pro-labor. Other people have discussed this extensively in the comments below.
This happens anyway, regardless of how well a company is doing. Tech has been laying off workers with record profits and very high margins. But I trust the workers to have better insight than you (or me) of whether the strike is beneficial for them or not in the long run.
Doctors have cartel though, instead of union that protects their jobs by limiting number of residency slots that limits number of new licensed doctors
In any case, we should aspire to follow the model of unions and not cartels.
Programmers are not "tradespeople." What an insane claim.
Doesn't mean they can't create/join a union, but they are not really in the tradesman category. White collar unions are much tinier.
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I kind of doubt actual tradespeople would be fond of us referring to ourselves as one of them
Trades are skilled labor, professions are knowledge specialists.
Maybe tangential, but I would have guessed people managers were not eligible to be a member of the union. Does anyone know how eligibility is determined?
The biggest advocate of pay rises and improvements to conditions is often the line level managers and those one step up from the line level managers. If this is a typical corporate job title this is a manager of line level managers. He probably has quarterly 1:1s or at least office hours supporting those at the lowest levels. It’s not like you become a line level manager, accept the 20% pay rises and suddenly change your outlook on everything. You’re never that far removed. Advocacy is important for management so I have no issues with this.
Most tech “* manager” roles where the object of management is not a person or team likely qualify.
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They've got 5900 employees and https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/07/business/media/new-york-t... says a quarterly profit of $104.7 million. $400M / 5900 gives about $68,000 profit per employee.
So, what's reasonable? Would giving everyone a $65k pay raise and zeroing out the profit for the company be correct? Would that put them close to what they'd get if they worked in big tech? ( https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28Apple%2C+Meta%2C+GOO... ). We're dealing with very different numbers there.
If you want my opinion, what you've described would be a start. Or at least the workers there should be parties to a decision on whether that's the right decision. I'd consider lowering executive compensation as well. But there's many ways to achieve a balance within an organization that benefits the product and the workers.
Also you can get a raise without "costing" anything extra in the expense column, such as fewer working hours for the same pay/benefits.
You can always (in a country like the US) find a group somewhere so much worse off that you can use them to paint US workers as greedy or spoiled.
The connection of these facts to exploitation is tenuous in this context, but it does make for good rhetoric.
Like, yes, these workers are probably in better conditions than many global workers. But that doesn't mean the NYT isn't exploiting them.
Also, consider showing some solidarity -- these people are workers, and have more in common with other workers than they have different. Support their strike, and expect them to support yours. Or at the very least support them advocating for better working conditions and expect they will support you in improving your workplace.
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Or this, from the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee: "Lastly, customers also have the right to honor the picket line and arguably have the most important role in influencing employers’ decisions, outside of the workers themselves."
Or this, from NYT writer: "Having walked a picket line before, I try not to cross anyone else’s. The W and its parent company, Marriott, know there are lots of people like me. So why hadn’t they disclosed in advance what would greet me upon arrival?"
[1] https://umaine.edu/ble/wp-content/uploads/sites/181/2014/11/...
[2] https://workerorganizing.org/how-to-honor-the-picket-line-an...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/01/your-money/should-hotels-...
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I believe the NYT guild has asked ppl to pause reading NYT in the past, however in many many cases the unions do not want a consumer boycott. so it really depends
And I can see why it can make sense to not call for a boycott. If workers are on strike, but consumer demand remains strong and their needs aren't being met, it puts pressure on management. Like if mail drivers go on strike, everyone stops getting deliveries, and suddenly it's obvious how critical those drivers are.
The best way to make sure you're in step with what the union is asking for from customers is to keep an eye on whatever they seem to be using to communicate the most - in this case, it seems to be their twitter: https://x.com/NYTGuildTech. I think it's fair to assume that if they have any requests for customers of NYT, they'll put them there.
I suppose sometimes it makes sense to boycott, but not all the time.
The answer is: don't make assumptions, listen to what the workers want. If they call for a boycott, boycott in support. If they say, "don't boycott", please don't encourage others to boycott.
Plenty in the media industry make money from engagement, and they might not want you to stop engaging! The writers strike, for instance, said keep watching but consider not producing content that builds off our content. Plenty of podcasts switched to other media for the duration.
1. The New York Times