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New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

washingtonpost.com

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Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#331

Post by yoyohello13 »

legitster wrote: post #323

> The two sides negotiated until late Sunday. The sticking points in recent days were over whether they could get a “just cause” provision in their contract, which means workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason; pay increases and pay equity; and return-to-office policies. This seems like a LOT of issues that still need to be hammered out. It would be one thing if they were disagreeing abou…

> Striking during election week is kind of a crappy move to pull.

That’s leverage. Striking during a time when the business doesn’t care is a dumb move.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#332

Post by keybored »

vijucat wrote: post #47
bwestergard wrote: post #3

I am also a member of the union at NPR, on the subway headed to the picket line in solidarity right now. Happy to answer any questions. I encourage everyone to respect the picket line and get your news elsewhere until the workers get a deal. The Times Workers are holding the line against arbitrary return to office mandates and for Just Cause protections. The vast majority of HN consists of developers, designers, QA,…

Genuine question: what prevents the NYT from offshoring these jobs if they can be done from home? I feel for you, as a fellow worker, but unless there is something hyper-local about the job such as regulatory requirements or trust issues with IP protection, the jobs will go to the ones who work hard without complaining too much.

There are already places with Internet access that can work for cheaper than people that live in the NY area. For a long time now. Clearly there are more variables at play here. Or else the local NYT employees could be the most subservient and diligent workers ever: they would still get replaced by the cheaper offshore labor eventually.

What prevents the NYT? In part: workers not just lying down and taking it. Just not “complaining” at all, like your implicit feel-for-you advice.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#333

Post by JohnBrookz »

legitster wrote: post #323

> The two sides negotiated until late Sunday. The sticking points in recent days were over whether they could get a “just cause” provision in their contract, which means workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason; pay increases and pay equity; and return-to-office policies. This seems like a LOT of issues that still need to be hammered out. It would be one thing if they were disagreeing abou…

That’s the perfect time to go on strike.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#334

Post by PittleyDunkin »

legitster wrote: post #323

> The two sides negotiated until late Sunday. The sticking points in recent days were over whether they could get a “just cause” provision in their contract, which means workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason; pay increases and pay equity; and return-to-office policies. This seems like a LOT of issues that still need to be hammered out. It would be one thing if they were disagreeing abou…

> Striking during election week is kind of a crappy move to pull.

It's smart. The one week where americans manage pull their head out of their ass is a good time to move.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#335

Post by surgical_fire »

randomdata wrote: post #94
surgical_fire wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offshoring is nothing new. Has been tried for decades, with multiple degrees of failure.

It seems they failed either because: 1. The businesses didn't know how to handle the workers not being in the office. While a problem in the past, this is now a solved problem thanks to COVID forcing them to figure it out. 2. The businesses tried to hire cheap workers. This is still going to fail, just as hiring minimum wage workers in the US for the job would fail. The workers you actually want charge the same no ma…

I worked both as an offshore contractor, and as part of a team with offshore members. I can ensure that #1 is bullshit. You can have the whole offshore team in an office butts in seats all day and meet with failure. Happened many times in the past.

#2 is a possibility. What happens when you do it is that your cheap hires tend to stay for a short time (as they will get better offers later, possibly involving relocation to better countries). You end up with the ones that are cheap for a reason.

Most of reasons for failure is that incentives in between contractors and hiring company is misaligned, leadership have no idea what they are doing, cultural differences, time zone differences, etc.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#336

Post by JBiserkov »

gnopgnip wrote: post #322
bwestergard wrote: post #3

I am also a member of the union at NPR, on the subway headed to the picket line in solidarity right now. Happy to answer any questions. I encourage everyone to respect the picket line and get your news elsewhere until the workers get a deal. The Times Workers are holding the line against arbitrary return to office mandates and for Just Cause protections. The vast majority of HN consists of developers, designers, QA,…

It sounds like the biggest contention is just cause for terminations instead of at will. If the employer normally isn't firing people without a good reason it sounds like an easy win. Why do they fight these negotiations so much?

Because. Employers are firing people without a good reason. It makes the stock price go up. And even the threat of it keeps the masses in check.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#337

Post by gorjusborg »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #316
lolinder wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but I work in a company that is fully remote with a mix of offshore and onshore. It's possible we'd hire junior engineers locally for the offshore roles if we went fully local, but there's zero chance that we could offshore any of our existing onshore roles. This is for a few reasons: 1. Data law compliance. We can't let people outside the US see PII, which precludes them from participating fully in many supp…

So many people underestimate the cost of coordinating across global time zones.

As well as take shared cultural context / communication for granted.

That isn't to say that teams should be monocultural, but expecting to have high performing teams without any thought to culture, time zone, or communication ability is optimistic.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#338

Post by cool_dude85 »

losvedir wrote: post #83
bwestergard wrote: post #3

I am also a member of the union at NPR, on the subway headed to the picket line in solidarity right now. Happy to answer any questions. I encourage everyone to respect the picket line and get your news elsewhere until the workers get a deal. The Times Workers are holding the line against arbitrary return to office mandates and for Just Cause protections. The vast majority of HN consists of developers, designers, QA,…

> I encourage everyone to respect the picket line and get your news elsewhere Technically, wouldn't "respecting the picket line" be not doing any "scab" work for the NYTimes? Asking us not to use the NYTimes is more of a boycott and a separate question (and not always something strikers ask for). Is it official policy of the strike that they request people boycott in solidarity as well?

One aspect of respecting the picket line is not scabbing, the second is refusing to do business, i.e. not crossing the picket line.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#339

Post by krainboltgreene »

legitster wrote: post #323

> The two sides negotiated until late Sunday. The sticking points in recent days were over whether they could get a “just cause” provision in their contract, which means workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason; pay increases and pay equity; and return-to-office policies. This seems like a LOT of issues that still need to be hammered out. It would be one thing if they were disagreeing abou…

It seems extremely bad taste for you to comment on the situation like this with such little insight. Like do you even have any union negotiation experience? Monday morning quarterbacking is always so tacky.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#340

Post by [deleted] »

purple_ferret wrote: post #315
insane_dreamer wrote: post #161

Have devs at any of the large tech companies ever tried to unionize? If not, why not?

The strength of a union is have a large organization with funds for lawyers and such. Most of those organizations (like the UAW) don't focus on technology positions, so software people are left out in a lurch a bit. NYTimes has savvy, vocal people in it that have someone overcome this.

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