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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

#441

Post by bloomingkales »

drawkward wrote: post #427
bloomingkales wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me correct you, this will be election month at minimum. The NYT kind of brings this kind of heat on itself because it has shifted from being just the paper of record over to an institution to the current definition of progressivism. You can only really do this union kinda stuff against self-important institutions. Which developer is ever going to attempt this on Accenture? They are straight up and honest about th…

> the current definition of progressivism It's a fairly pro-business paper, certainly not very critical of Israel, and you appear to have completely missed all of its somewhat trans-skeptical reporting and opinion. (The latter pervasive enough to rankle many of its own employees about the tone and tenor of NYT coverage of trans issues.)

I want to believe you, but my hunch is your reply is similar to someone suggesting "Well, you see, you forgot all the pro liberal coverage that Fox News has been doing all year".

Does NYT not have a reputation or am I truly out of touch here? I went through some of their podcasts recently and it's all quite one-sided, for example.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#442

Post by whalesalad »

stickfigure wrote: post #342
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…

> workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason This is such a weird request for technology workers. You want to work with low-performing coworkers?

[flagged]

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#443

Post by PittleyDunkin »

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?

> If the employer normally isn't firing people without a good reason

Isn't this the default state of affairs for american private enterprise? This is why PIPs are so wildly popular—it's trivial to fabricate performance reasoning regardless of the actual motivations for firing.

Granted, I don't see how you could negotiate your way out of this. We need federal labor protections to make serious movement on this.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#444

Post by gruez »

calibas wrote: post #431

Why would anybody trust a NYT article about internal drama at the NYT? Does HN not understand bias? Compare the NYT article to other reporting, and you can see the difference. There's a few things the NYT forgot to mention, like the fact that these negotiations have been drawn out for 2 years now. Or this: "Throughout the bargaining process, Times management has engaged in numerous labor law violations, including imp…

>"Why would anybody trust a NYT article about internal drama at the NYT? Does HN not understand bias?"

>links to a blog post from the union

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#446

Post by lallysingh »

stickfigure wrote: post #342
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…

> workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason This is such a weird request for technology workers. You want to work with low-performing coworkers?

Who wrote the article? What's their interest in the issue?

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#447

Post by bko »

quandrum wrote: post #408
stickfigure wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason This is such a weird request for technology workers. You want to work with low-performing coworkers?

No, I want management to develop a system to determine who is low-performing, document when those workers don't meet the standards of performance, and reference those documents when they fire someone. It's just asking for due process.

This sounds good, but in my experience bad employees were known to everyone. It was difficult to pinpoint exactly why they were bad or toxic, but pretty much everyone agreed. If you gave them some benchmark they would need to hit (e.g. close tickets, be on call, etc), they would be able to do so. So creating a documentation trail is difficult, especially if its based on people saying they don't think he does good work or people don't want to work with him.

This is where I break with the "pro worker" dialog you hear online a lot. In my experience, competent employees are incredible difficult to come by. Recruiters are paid a few months salary just to get someone through the door. To think that employers are just randomly firing people for no reason has never struck me as being even remotely true. I'd prefer the quick to hire, quick to fire economy. Especially since employers would be much less likely to take a chance if they know there are a lot of hoops they'd have to jump through if it didn't work out

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#448

Post by csallen »

lucianbr wrote: post #372
stickfigure wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason This is such a weird request for technology workers. You want to work with low-performing coworkers?

As if only low-performing coworkers would be terminated. The total freedom of the company to terminate anyone any time for any reason or no reason is extreme, and now we are pivoting to the other extreme. Funny how that happens.

Why is that extreme? If you own a company, why shouldn't you be able to fire someone at any time? If you work a job, why shouldn't you be able to quit at any time?

I don't think it's great that our society tries to treat work like it's family, and jobs like they're some guaranteed long-term relationship. It sets people up with the wrong expectations.

Your company will lay you off or fire you once they run out of money to pay you or reason to keep you on board. That's how it works. Just as you will quit your job and take a new one if you interview and get a better offer elsewhere.

These are business contracts.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#449

Post by kjksf »

quandrum wrote: post #408
stickfigure wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason This is such a weird request for technology workers. You want to work with low-performing coworkers?

No, I want management to develop a system to determine who is low-performing, document when those workers don't meet the standards of performance, and reference those documents when they fire someone. It's just asking for due process.

That might by what YOU want or what you hallucinate the demand is but most reasonable interpretation of what we know is that they in fact want to prevent being fired for low performance.

if you can be fired "only for misconduct" and low performance doesn't count as misconduct means that you cannot be fired for low performance.

Granted, the actual demand might be more nuanced but going only by what was reported, they don't want to be fired for low performance.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#450

Post by lallysingh »

gruez wrote: post #444
calibas wrote: post #431

Why would anybody trust a NYT article about internal drama at the NYT? Does HN not understand bias? Compare the NYT article to other reporting, and you can see the difference. There's a few things the NYT forgot to mention, like the fact that these negotiations have been drawn out for 2 years now. Or this: "Throughout the bargaining process, Times management has engaged in numerous labor law violations, including imp…

>"Why would anybody trust a NYT article about internal drama at the NYT? Does HN not understand bias?" >links to a blog post from the union

Descriptions from both sides are now included, what did you want here?
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