11 ms·

It should tell you something that 95% of the union voted to strike. I found more information from them here: https://www.nyguild.org/post/new-york-times-tech-g

• sieabahlpark 2y ago
  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.
• aurareturn 2y 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?
  • ljlolel 2y ago
    They’re also incredibly non-diverse and complain about big tech being non-diverse.
    • gwervc 2y ago
      Always the same story... A few years ago a big left French newspaper (Libération) always pushing for "diversity" published a photo of their staff, which was like 98- 100% white.
      • throwawaylolx 2y ago
        [flagged]
        • Larrikin 2y ago
          Which ones?
          • ekianjo 2y ago
            every employer that has quotas for non-white employees? that necessarily follows. not that its not limited to race. if an org wants more women they will actively select candidates based on gender first.
            • Zigurd 2y ago
              Comparing a specific employer against "every employer that has quotas" is not a useful comparison.
              • parineum 2y ago
                Discrimination is a necessary means to achieve quoatas, no matter what the quota is. Introducing discrimination is often the explicitly stated purpose of quotas
                • Zigurd 2y ago
                  The reason it's not a useful comparison is that unnamed, nonspecific "employer who has quotas" is assuming that many employers have quotas. Who? How much? And did they eat my cat?
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • HPsquared 2y ago
    Projection is a thing (assuming the opinions they print are their own)
  • ETH_start 2y ago
    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.
    • donohoe 2y ago
      I worked at NYT for seven years and I can say from direct personal experience that your many points are not true.
      • reissbaker 2y ago
        Kelsey Piper, a journalist at Vox, leaked two years ago that the NYT has had a years-long top-down directive to only write negative stories about tech [1]. Plenty of journalists have confirmed this since. Since you worked at the NYT for seven years, want to explain that particular policy in light of your rebuttal that the NYT had no conflict of interest and wasn't trying to smear tech companies? 1: https://x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1588231892792328192 https://x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1588231892792328192
        • donohoe 2y ago
          You are making a very different claim here. The parent comment says: >> The NY Times is pro-union and anti-big-tech [...] That is the claim. These are the reasons it sues, and my notes on each: * journalists are unionized and tech platforms disintermediate unions Thats a broad generalization based on the authors opinion and not necessarily true. The attitude was not reflective of my interactions with journalists either. I would dispute this from personal experience. We can agree/disagree forever, I'm just giving my IRL experience. * workers that produce articles and create the newsroom culture have a conflict of interest It could be said that any journalist who covers any subject has a conflict of interest by covering that subject. Thats a bit weak. * tech threatens the ad revenue of traditional news media. Yeah. Rising costs of paper also threaten traditional news media. The NYT is profitable and not reliant on ad revenue streams for survival. They have a health revenue stream in number of other areas. In addition, for better or for worse, most journalists don't actually know/care that much about ad revenue given the tradition divides between business and editorial sides (I see that at many media orgs I have worked for - its not just the NYT) So.. that was what I was talking about ("workers", not a "top-down directive"). In regards to your point: Thats a new and different claim so hard for me to speak to that. I would note that the claim came from Matthew Yglesias. He since deleted the tweet. I would note that he never worked at the NYT as far as I can tell. I don't know much of Kelsey Piper, but she "heard it from NYT reporters at the time" so not quite first-hand account either. Her tweet is not a "leak" (thats very different) and I see nothing to prove or substantiate it - just she "heard" it. I'll keep an open mind but I'm skeptical.
  • Retric 2y 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.
  • gsky 2y ago
    Easier said than done, right. Who would dare to criticize them afterall
  • ParetoOptimal 2y ago
    Yeah, therefore big tech should get to treat their workers however.
  • cantSpellSober 2y ago
    > Who are they to judge how big tech treats their employees when they pay their own so poorly? 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."
    • lupusreal 2y ago
      I wonder if the NYTimes journalists will sympathy strike. (They won't.)
    • matrix87 2y ago
      Are you saying that management doesn't have input on editorial direction? sounds pretty hard to believe
    • ramon156 2y ago
      Uh hello, journalists also don't choose the theme they write in. That's also management
      • cantSpellSober 2y ago
        You're thinking of editors, and journalists do choose what they cover to an extent. Management ostensibly sees that everything goes according to plan/schedule. Fair point though–if mgmt is pushing some initiative, that pressure is felt in a newsroom.
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • nemo44x 2y ago
    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.
  • eli_gottlieb 2y ago
    When the bloody hell has the New York Times been pro-union?
  • kettlepot1337 2y 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? 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/ 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.
    • tiznow 2y ago
      It's funny, my experience with NYT and tech has been the opposite as a minority -- probably a lot easier to get in than many would think, but talent is not the fulcrum. "Half the staff is Jewish" made me laugh though, perhaps closer to true than false. It's funny how people call The New Yorker the pinnacle of privilege as a writer-type, and their staff writer team is more diverse than just about any other East Coast bigwig outlet.
  • vrosas 2y ago
    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”.
  • salawat 2y ago
    ...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.
  • whimsicalism 2y ago
    it’s not ironic at all, usually ostensibly left organizations are most vulnerable to union pressure because of their customer base. almost all modern places that unionize have a liberal/left-leaning customer base the company is afraid of losing
  • tiznow 2y ago
    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
• andsoitis 2y ago
  > I wonder how other news outlets will cover this, if at all. 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-strike-over-return-to-office-rules-bloomberg-news-2023-10-30/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-york-times-tech-workers...
  • busterarm 2y ago
    Tbf, I wouldn't want to go back to that office. That area of NY is always swarmed with NYPDESU and is kind of a shithole.
  • washadjeffmad 2y ago
    I'd cry irony, but I couldn't imagine the modern NYT writing about the help.
• giantg2 2y ago
  I wanted to look at the pay study, but all it did was link me to another page with the same pay blurbs, but no actual study.
• dialup_sounds 2y ago
  The source says that 89% of members voted and it passed by 95%, which is about 85% of the union, not 95% of the union.
• julesqs 2y ago
  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.
  • lupusreal 2y ago
    > 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.
    • julesqs 2y ago
      sure. Not making excuses for any business decisions by newspaper management, just pointing out that that their criticism of the tech industry isn't out of character with a company that also is hostile their own workers' union.
• jimbokun 2y ago
  > * 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 Do they work equivalent jobs with equivalent experience?
  • ryandrake 2y ago
    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.
    • pc86 2y ago
      This presupposes a lot of pretty nasty things. It reads like you apply to the NYT and then you get offered a job based on your gender or race which is obviously not the case. That lack of equity (which is equality of outcome, not opportunity) is itself a problem and not simply a byproduct of different people being different. That when your entire sample size is 622, you can make broad generalizations based on the pay of ~37 of them. Even if you can, it also assumes that your salary in your job is based on objective set criteria and not a) whether you negotiate, b) how hard you negotiate, c) whether you have a BATNA that makes you need the job less, d) whether you had breakfast that morning or were more tired than normal or were coming down with a cold or any number of a myriad of other things that could affect a high-stakes negotiation. The pay gap as a systemic issue (for equal work for equal hours with equal qualifications) has been debunked a thousand times over. But while it's certainly possible (likely?) that some individual companies have a racially or gender-driven pay gap, it's a far stretch to assume that the NYT is one of them. Equality of opportunity is good, giving people a leg up early in their lives when they've been disadvantaged, regardless of their race or gender, is good. "Equity" for the sake of it is racist.
      • darby_nine 2y ago
        > It reads like you apply to the NYT and then you get offered a job based on your gender or race which is obviously not the case. Obviously? A newspaper is exactly the kind of business to hire based on your personal narrative (including 100% of protected class intersections). That's the entire point of the opinion column. Granted, I don't think that the folks being discussed here are publishing any personal opinions, and I doubt the times is doing anything legally actionable or we would have heard about it, but the idea that they don't consider these factors just because it's illegal is laughable.
• darthrupert 2y ago
  What percentage of workers are in the union?
• VirusNewbie 2y ago
  It tells me most of the talent left.
  • aiisjustanif 2y ago
    I think it is absurd that people imply that highly skilled individuals do not unionize or should never.