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I'm not a New York Times employee, but I do work at another large American media organization as a software developer, and was elected to our bargaining committ

I'm not a New York Times employee, but I do work at another large American media organization as a software developer, and was elected to our bargaining committee to represent software developers. We are part of the same union[1]. I have met many bargaining committee members at the NYT and they are all extremely sharp. The tech guild is well organized and I think the NYT management has much more to lose than the workforce in these negotiations. Per the article, there are two main issues behind this strike: remote work and open bargaining. We have a tentative contract agreement that we're voting on this week; it would guarantee remote work for devs for three years, and put caps on days in office for some workers who have on site job duties. The NYT is trying to avoid bargaining over remote work full stop by making unilateral changes before they bargaining a full contact (their legal obligation). The other issue is open bargaining, which simply means that that union members can observe the bargaining sessions that will produce the agreement they will vote on. Without open bargaining, it's very difficult for members to be involved in improving proposals. Every single one of our bargaining sessions was open, and I can't imagine doing it any other way. The NYT would prefer closed door meetings because it gives them opportunities them to drive a wedge between the workers who do the bargaining and their peers. Unfortunately, many unions have been cowed into accepting this employer demand, such that the NYT can present closed door bargaining as "typical". [1]: http://code-cwa.org http://code-cwa.org

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> NYT would prefer closed door meetings because it gives them opportunities them to drive a wedge between the workers who do the bargaining and their peers To be fair, it also deters posturing and promotes compromise. Open bargaining means not only every employee is involved, but inevitably, the broader public, too.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
One of the things I've noticed with a number of recent strikes (not all, but a bunch) is how many are not over pay but primarily over working conditions. E.g. there was a big strike by nurses in Austin whose primary concern was woefully short staffing that was leaving nurses burnt out and making it difficult to provide adequate care. It feels to me like the pandemic fundamentally changed many people's mindsets with their relationship to work: while I think some people went off the deep end with the r/antiwork crowd, others just reconsidered the amount of time and effort they wanted to put towards work so it wasn't detrimental to other aspects of their lives. They still wanted to do good work and have pride in their work, it was just no longer their primary focus. So I feel a lot of these union battles are primarily about control. Many employees basically did get a bit "woke" (not in the woke-liberal sense, but in the "my eyes are opened to why am I killing myself at a job" sense), and employers are trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
- Frost1x 3y ago
  >One of the things I've noticed with a number of recent strikes (not all, but a bunch) is how many are not over pay but primarily over working conditions. E.g. there was a big strike by nurses in Austin whose primary concern was woefully short staffing that was leaving nurses burnt out and making it difficult to provide adequate care. Actualized pay is often more the issue here, however we look at or segment it (working conditions, net pay, etc). It's about the net transaction of your time for labor vs compensation. Magnitude of compensation is important because people need enough money and free time to make it worth working, but there are many ways to squeeze this, just as your example points out. Understaffing, pushing increased productivity requirements, tucking in new responsibilities, reducing benefits in some way, slacking on safety or security, etc. It's difficult to quantify all of this for most people so we often just look at pay. We'll, getting paid more than enough to live comfortably.. sure, but maybe you're working long hours to get that and stressed out of your mind. Maybe you're losing sleep. Maybe you're sacrificing your health to focus on improved business outputs. It's an in/out situation, are you getting enough out for what you put in and that's often the issue. Any business paying market rates will be quick to point at salary and ignore everything else because it's very easy to discuss, compare, and argue about.
  - clbrmbr 3y ago
    But the labor market is not that liquid. May be easier to fight for changes at current employer than pound the pavement. This is compounded by seniority perks, insurance (COBRA costs), relocation costs (financial and personal), and to some extent non-compete clauses.
- dmoy 3y ago
  > is how many are not over pay but primarily over working conditions. A lot of the OG strikes in the US were mostly about working conditions too - e.g. coal wars (which ended with literal armed conflict between thousands of strikers and the military...), railroad strikes, etc etc. Back then the working conditions were like "we don't want to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week", "we don't want to die from toxic fumes", etc.
danielvf 3y ago
Thanks for sharing. It's valuable to hear from so close to the situation. I'm interested in seeing how the open bargaining turns out - my understanding had been that closed bargaining evolved to solve problems with open bargaining, but perhaps the situation has changed now, and unions need to prioritize member engagement more these days than in the past.
rendall 3y ago
Such good news that unions are getting more legitimacy in the US. Keep it up!
ck425 3y ago
Interesting that remote working is one of the key demands. I wonder if this is what will finally get tech workers to appreciate the value of unions.
silenced_trope 3y ago
I imagine unionizing software engineers at a media company is probably a bit easier since the equity side of NYT is likely not as valuable as tech companies in the Bay Area. For instance there's also this news today out of union-heavy Sweden where a Tesla worker walk-out failed: > Some younger employees also reportedly stated that their salary and career paths are much better at Tesla as compared to other automakers. They also appreciated the fact that they were issued stock options from the company, some of whom have reportedly seen an increase of several hundred percent to date. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38070432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38070432 Of course there's also alternative data points: such as most employees only speaking on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisals.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> NYT would prefer closed door meetings because it gives them opportunities them to drive a wedge between the workers who do the bargaining and their peers To be fair, it also deters posturing and promotes compromise. Open bargaining means not only every employee is involved, but inevitably, the broader public, too.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

One of the things I've noticed with a number of recent strikes (not all, but a bunch) is how many are not over pay but primarily over working conditions. E.g. there was a big strike by nurses in Austin whose primary concern was woefully short staffing that was leaving nurses burnt out and making it difficult to provide adequate care. It feels to me like the pandemic fundamentally changed many people's mindsets with their relationship to work: while I think some people went off the deep end with the r/antiwork crowd, others just reconsidered the amount of time and effort they wanted to put towards work so it wasn't detrimental to other aspects of their lives. They still wanted to do good work and have pride in their work, it was just no longer their primary focus. So I feel a lot of these union battles are primarily about control. Many employees basically did get a bit "woke" (not in the woke-liberal sense, but in the "my eyes are opened to why am I killing myself at a job" sense), and employers are trying to put the genie back in the bottle.

Frost1x 3y ago
>One of the things I've noticed with a number of recent strikes (not all, but a bunch) is how many are not over pay but primarily over working conditions. E.g. there was a big strike by nurses in Austin whose primary concern was woefully short staffing that was leaving nurses burnt out and making it difficult to provide adequate care. Actualized pay is often more the issue here, however we look at or segment it (working conditions, net pay, etc). It's about the net transaction of your time for labor vs compensation. Magnitude of compensation is important because people need enough money and free time to make it worth working, but there are many ways to squeeze this, just as your example points out. Understaffing, pushing increased productivity requirements, tucking in new responsibilities, reducing benefits in some way, slacking on safety or security, etc. It's difficult to quantify all of this for most people so we often just look at pay. We'll, getting paid more than enough to live comfortably.. sure, but maybe you're working long hours to get that and stressed out of your mind. Maybe you're losing sleep. Maybe you're sacrificing your health to focus on improved business outputs. It's an in/out situation, are you getting enough out for what you put in and that's often the issue. Any business paying market rates will be quick to point at salary and ignore everything else because it's very easy to discuss, compare, and argue about.
- clbrmbr 3y ago
  But the labor market is not that liquid. May be easier to fight for changes at current employer than pound the pavement. This is compounded by seniority perks, insurance (COBRA costs), relocation costs (financial and personal), and to some extent non-compete clauses.
dmoy 3y ago
> is how many are not over pay but primarily over working conditions. A lot of the OG strikes in the US were mostly about working conditions too - e.g. coal wars (which ended with literal armed conflict between thousands of strikers and the military...), railroad strikes, etc etc. Back then the working conditions were like "we don't want to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week", "we don't want to die from toxic fumes", etc.

danielvf 3y ago

Thanks for sharing. It's valuable to hear from so close to the situation. I'm interested in seeing how the open bargaining turns out - my understanding had been that closed bargaining evolved to solve problems with open bargaining, but perhaps the situation has changed now, and unions need to prioritize member engagement more these days than in the past.

rendall 3y ago

Such good news that unions are getting more legitimacy in the US. Keep it up!

ck425 3y ago

Interesting that remote working is one of the key demands. I wonder if this is what will finally get tech workers to appreciate the value of unions.

silenced_trope 3y ago

I imagine unionizing software engineers at a media company is probably a bit easier since the equity side of NYT is likely not as valuable as tech companies in the Bay Area. For instance there's also this news today out of union-heavy Sweden where a Tesla worker walk-out failed: > Some younger employees also reportedly stated that their salary and career paths are much better at Tesla as compared to other automakers. They also appreciated the fact that they were issued stock options from the company, some of whom have reportedly seen an increase of several hundred percent to date. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38070432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38070432 Of course there's also alternative data points: such as most employees only speaking on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisals.