3 ms·

What would be more equitable? https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=New+York+Times&assumption=%7B%22C%22%2C+%22New+York+Times%22%7D+-%3E+%7B%22Financial%22%7D h

by shagie 2y ago

What would be more equitable? https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=New+York+Times&assumption=%7B%22C%22%2C+%22New+York+Times%22%7D+-%3E+%7B%22Financial%22%7D https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=New+York+Times&assumpti... puts the revenue per employee at $422,656. They've got 5900 employees and https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/07/business/media/new-york-times-earnings.html 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+GOOG%2C+Netflix%29+revenue+per+employee https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28Apple%2C+Meta%2C+GOO... ). We're dealing with very different numbers there.

Clubber 2y ago
Union negotiation isn't always about money, though it is usually part of it. It's also about working conditions and benefits. Also you can get a raise without "costing" anything extra in the expense column, such as fewer working hours for the same pay/benefits.
- shagie 2y ago
  There are potentially many reasonable things to negotiate for. So far, all the information I can find is "stalled contract negotiations". Working without a contract is a perfectly valid reason to strike. Things like making sure that AI isn't used in certain capacities to reduce the staff size wouldn't be unreasonable. As of yet, the contents of the negotiation aren't public - so we can only guess. In the meantime, the idea that everyone should be able to make Big Tech wages ignores the reality that most companies aren't Big Tech and have a revenue per employee that is a small fraction of it... and are running on much slimmer profit margins.
  - morgante 2y ago
    > Things like making sure that AI isn't used in certain capacities to reduce the staff size wouldn't be unreasonable. Yes it would. Explicitly demanding inefficiency is exactly why unions are terrible for innovation and progress.
    - rincebrain 2y ago
      There's likely always going to be tension between how many people management thinks are necessary to do the work and the reality of people not working like machines. If the union workers think that management would like to cut things so much that it will cause the quality of the resulting work to suffer drastically, to say nothing of their health, then they're not arguing for inefficiency. And if they don't trust that any sort of metric for "good enough" wouldn't be gameable since the management has more expensive lawyers to write contracts than them, a blanket rule makes more logical sense than trying to bet you didn't leave a loophole. (All opinions my own, obviously.)
    - cess11 2y ago
      That's a strawman. The demand you're quoting is to not fire people.
      - paperplatter 2y ago
        Keeping employees they don't need/want is an inefficiency.
        cess11 2y ago
        No, which is why worker owned organisations tend to be more resilient to downturns.
- paperplatter 2y ago
  This is a distinction without difference.
hungie 2y ago
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.
- shagie 2y ago
  > If you want the Union's opinion, their strike demands are the place to look. https://www.axios.com/2024/09/10/nyt-tech-union-strike-vote https://www.axios.com/2024/09/10/nyt-tech-union-strike-vote > The New York Times Tech Guild, which represents more than 600 staffers, on Tuesday voted to authorize a strike in protest of stalled contract negotiations with The Times' management, sources confirmed to Axios. I haven't found anything else. While stalled contract negotiations would be reasonable ("we're not going to work without a contract"), it appears that so far those negotiations aren't public for what it is that they want. ... > I'd consider lowering executive compensation as well. The CEO has a total compensation package of about $10M per year. Lets slash that to $4M (average for the size of the company of NYT is $8M - so half of what a CEO would get somewhere else) and divide that $6M up between 600 tech workers and they got a $10k pay raise. If this to be divided between all the workers for NYT, it's a $1k pay raise. While we can bemoan the amounts that CEOs get, slashing the salaries will not often produce significant increases for the rest of the workers.
  - remram 2y ago
    https://www.nyguild.org/post/new-york-times-tech-guild-votes-yes-to-strike https://www.nyguild.org/post/new-york-times-tech-guild-votes...
    - shagie 2y ago
      Thank you... > The Tech Guild, which won its union election by a landslide in March 2022, is negotiating its first contract. Times management has been dragging their feet in bargaining and attacking the Tech Guild every step of the way since workers first announced their intention to be a union in 2021. > Among the major issues at stake for the Tech Guild is job security, which is under threat from the rise of AI and the company’s discriminatory practices around discipline and termination. Two-thirds of the members fired by New York Times management since the Times Tech Guild formed have been from underrepresented groups. Union members on visas have had their lives thrown into chaos when the company arbitrarily put their immigration status at risk. Members called out the Times for this practice in a reply-all email action in June. > These actions by management are among the many reasons why Tech Guild members are fighting for “just cause” protections in their contract, an industry and labor standard which requires management to have a just and fair reason to discipline an employee. Times management is attempting to force tech workers to accept a carveout that undermines that standard of due process in the workplace and puts more of their colleagues in the line of fire. > Correcting pay inequity is another critical strike issue. In June, the Tech Guild released its pay study which found that: > Women, who make up 41% of the Tech Guild, earn 12% less on average than men > 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 > Pay inequity isn’t new at The Times. The Times Guild, which represents nearly 1,500 workers in the newsroom, advertising and other areas of the company, has also taken on pay inequity. --- As far as I can see it is: Slow negotiations Job security: AI, discriminatory discipline and termination. Pay equity within the tech workers (as part of a larger pay equity issue at The Times). As described, this doesn't seem unreasonable.

by shagie 2y ago

Clubber 2y ago

Union negotiation isn't always about money, though it is usually part of it. It's also about working conditions and benefits. Also you can get a raise without "costing" anything extra in the expense column, such as fewer working hours for the same pay/benefits.

shagie 2y ago
There are potentially many reasonable things to negotiate for. So far, all the information I can find is "stalled contract negotiations". Working without a contract is a perfectly valid reason to strike. Things like making sure that AI isn't used in certain capacities to reduce the staff size wouldn't be unreasonable. As of yet, the contents of the negotiation aren't public - so we can only guess. In the meantime, the idea that everyone should be able to make Big Tech wages ignores the reality that most companies aren't Big Tech and have a revenue per employee that is a small fraction of it... and are running on much slimmer profit margins.
- morgante 2y ago
  > Things like making sure that AI isn't used in certain capacities to reduce the staff size wouldn't be unreasonable. Yes it would. Explicitly demanding inefficiency is exactly why unions are terrible for innovation and progress.
  - rincebrain 2y ago
    There's likely always going to be tension between how many people management thinks are necessary to do the work and the reality of people not working like machines. If the union workers think that management would like to cut things so much that it will cause the quality of the resulting work to suffer drastically, to say nothing of their health, then they're not arguing for inefficiency. And if they don't trust that any sort of metric for "good enough" wouldn't be gameable since the management has more expensive lawyers to write contracts than them, a blanket rule makes more logical sense than trying to bet you didn't leave a loophole. (All opinions my own, obviously.)
  - cess11 2y ago
    That's a strawman. The demand you're quoting is to not fire people.
    - paperplatter 2y ago
      Keeping employees they don't need/want is an inefficiency.
      - cess11 2y ago
        No, which is why worker owned organisations tend to be more resilient to downturns.
paperplatter 2y ago
This is a distinction without difference.

hungie 2y ago

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.

shagie 2y ago
> If you want the Union's opinion, their strike demands are the place to look. https://www.axios.com/2024/09/10/nyt-tech-union-strike-vote https://www.axios.com/2024/09/10/nyt-tech-union-strike-vote > The New York Times Tech Guild, which represents more than 600 staffers, on Tuesday voted to authorize a strike in protest of stalled contract negotiations with The Times' management, sources confirmed to Axios. I haven't found anything else. While stalled contract negotiations would be reasonable ("we're not going to work without a contract"), it appears that so far those negotiations aren't public for what it is that they want. ... > I'd consider lowering executive compensation as well. The CEO has a total compensation package of about $10M per year. Lets slash that to $4M (average for the size of the company of NYT is $8M - so half of what a CEO would get somewhere else) and divide that $6M up between 600 tech workers and they got a $10k pay raise. If this to be divided between all the workers for NYT, it's a $1k pay raise. While we can bemoan the amounts that CEOs get, slashing the salaries will not often produce significant increases for the rest of the workers.
- remram 2y ago
  https://www.nyguild.org/post/new-york-times-tech-guild-votes-yes-to-strike https://www.nyguild.org/post/new-york-times-tech-guild-votes...
  - shagie 2y ago
    Thank you... > The Tech Guild, which won its union election by a landslide in March 2022, is negotiating its first contract. Times management has been dragging their feet in bargaining and attacking the Tech Guild every step of the way since workers first announced their intention to be a union in 2021. > Among the major issues at stake for the Tech Guild is job security, which is under threat from the rise of AI and the company’s discriminatory practices around discipline and termination. Two-thirds of the members fired by New York Times management since the Times Tech Guild formed have been from underrepresented groups. Union members on visas have had their lives thrown into chaos when the company arbitrarily put their immigration status at risk. Members called out the Times for this practice in a reply-all email action in June. > These actions by management are among the many reasons why Tech Guild members are fighting for “just cause” protections in their contract, an industry and labor standard which requires management to have a just and fair reason to discipline an employee. Times management is attempting to force tech workers to accept a carveout that undermines that standard of due process in the workplace and puts more of their colleagues in the line of fire. > Correcting pay inequity is another critical strike issue. In June, the Tech Guild released its pay study which found that: > Women, who make up 41% of the Tech Guild, earn 12% less on average than men > 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 > Pay inequity isn’t new at The Times. The Times Guild, which represents nearly 1,500 workers in the newsroom, advertising and other areas of the company, has also taken on pay inequity. --- As far as I can see it is: Slow negotiations Job security: AI, discriminatory discipline and termination. Pay equity within the tech workers (as part of a larger pay equity issue at The Times). As described, this doesn't seem unreasonable.