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New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

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Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#141

Post by Manuel_D »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #136
Manuel_D wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Google, the NY Times has a profit margin of 6-10% in most quarters. They're not exactly rolling in cash. Not to mention, there's a bunch of other teams at the NY Times that presumably want raises too. What's the justification for giving a raise to developers, but not to the writers that produce the company's main product?

I'm sure the tech guild would be happy for the writers' union to win contract raises too. I don't know why you think they wouldn't be.

Is there enough money to afford the proposed pay raises? 6% profit margin isn't much. Granting the proposed pay raises to both groups could easily put the company in the red.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#142

Post by Clubber »

shagie wrote: post #129
hungie wrote: post #31

Good for them. More workers need to be understanding just how much they are being exploited by their leadership and demand a more equitable piece of the pie.

What would be more equitable? 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-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 fo…

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.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#143

Post by shagie »

javagram wrote: post #46
oconnore wrote: post #25

As I understand it, the earliest they could actually strike would be 80 days from today, as per the Taft-Hartley act, putting the strike on November 29 (after the election). Something seems broken when a group is paid relatively fair wages ( https://www.levels.fyi/companies/the-new-york-times-company/... ), works 35 hours a week before overtime, and is talking about going on a strike. I don't think that fits with the…

NYT is the premier digital news outlet. Why should a principal SWE there get paid less than a senior SWE working on Google News, for instance? If NYT has the money it makes sense to me for the employees to ask for higher pay. What else is the original purpose of unions than to give workers power to bargain with the company?

> Why should a principal SWE there get paid less than a senior SWE working on Google News, for instance?

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28GOOGL%2C+NYT%29+reve...

    (GOOGL, NYT) revenue per employee

    Alphabet Class A Shares | $1.815 million (US dollars)
    New York Times Company  | $422656.27 (US dollars)

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#144

Post by klyrs »

mc32 wrote: post #113
klyrs wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand I have recently seen George W. Bush being described as a progressive because he wouldn't say who he's voting for. Left/right determination seems to be made purely on loyalty to a single individual in today's US politics. So if that's where we're at, NYT is liberal because it won't endorse Trump. That's fine, but let's just say that. In the world outside of petty dictatorships, though, left/right det…

The neocon thing is weird. Bernie and others used to compare Cheney with pretty unsavory characters in history, but now he’s lauded by progressives. This shit is getting weird. Some weird realignment is happening where former enemies are bedfellows now with a new enemy. In very loose terms, Republicans are subverting previous Democratic issues and the Democrats are subverting previous neocon issues. The Dems now get…

I haven't seen Cheney being lauded for anything other than maintaining his stand against somebody he has been calling a criminal, coward, and worse for years. I haven't seen a single democrat show excitement over policies supported by Cheney, except when he says that the law should apply to Trump as well as the rest of us. So, again, what you're calling weird is largely a result of loyalty to a person instead of actual policies.

And, yes, the world remembers Bernie's about-face on policy -- there's been quite a lot (e.g., [1]) written on the topic. But it's pretty normal for politicians and even political parties to change their minds in issues over a span of time as long as Bernie's career. This should be expected of politicians: they should be willing to change their minds and adapt their policies to new facts gained over time. Moreover, they exist to represent We The People, so when we change our collective minds, politicians who fail to keep up are replaced! Bernie is still around despite his change of heart precisely because it followed that of his constituency.

Do you remember when Theodore Roosevelt ran on the Progressive Party ticket? That party, founded by a lesbian, was eventually folded back into the mainstream Republican party back when Democrats were conservatives. There's nothing weird about parties and politicians changing their minds on stuff.

[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/25/21143931/b...

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#145

Post by mandmandam »

hollerith wrote: post #127
mandmandam wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is definitely to the left of the median US voter. No, it isn't, and it's not remotely close. The median US voter is far more left wing than you would know from politics and media. Most voters actually support an arms embargo vs Israel, support universal healthcare, support action on climate change, want an end to the prison industrial complex, want minimum wage increases, gun control, an end to predatory college…

And the main problem with Stalin was that he wasn't leftist enough, eh?

Thank you for exemplifying my point.

There's nothing particularly radical about wanting more fair healthcare, labor rights, education, housing etc.

As I pointed out, the majority of Americans want those things. It's pretty basic human decency, empathy, efficiency, etc.

And yet, when you raise these _majority_ viewpoints, someone pops up from behind a Bush to call you 'tankie'/'commie'/'literally Stalin'. That's not an accident. There are some people who like things the way thay are, and about 6 of those people own 90% of all media.

We spent over 8 trillion dollars (!) in the Middle East, murdering millions, all based on lies; and now our Democrat candidate is overjoyed to get endorsements from the architects of those wars... At every stage, from plotting to image rehabilitation, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria to Lebanon to Yemen, etc, to Gaza, the NYT was with those warmongers all the way.

They're not left. Never were.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#146

Post by maximinus_thrax »

Djdjur7373bb wrote: post #59
RobRivera wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What have you done to better understand the technical worker needs of the NYT?

Are you suggesting it's unreasonable to ask here without doing his own independent research? It seems like a reasonable thing to discuss here.

I'm not OP, but I'm also irritated by these kinds of questions, especially during discussions about labor disputes. This is a well-established recipe to muddy the waters for all posts touching on tech workers and labor unions (all 3 are present in the comments, here):

- 'They make enough money, why do they need collective bargaining?'

- 'Why does NYT need SO MANY tech workers? It's a newspaper after all, right?'

- 'The job market is bad, so they should be THANKFUL to even have a job' OR 'They should just get a new job that pays better, the free market will fix it' - depending on how the job market looks.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#147

Post by DinoDad13 »

mint2 wrote: post #73
gamepsys wrote: post #2

This could be a blueprint for how other tech departments unionize, but I suspect NYT is a unique case because of their politics. Can such a left wing cornerstone really afford to look anti-union inside their own house? This gives the workers more leverage than they would otherwise have in other companies. In any of the places I worked at in the past an anti-union consulting firm would have been called in to bust thin…

Regardless of what infographic makers declare, the NYT newsroom is not “left” leaning. Their coverage is much more complicated than left vs right, but one theme is they don’t question the loudest narratives, and they hold grudges when they perceive someone to not give them enough access. The right tends to be louder and more uniform and persistent in messaging, so that coloring often gets unconsciously added to artic…

Any reasonably fair news coverage is considered left wing now-a-days.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#148

Post by Cushman »

wpietri wrote: post #43
tptacek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not transacting with a business in solidarity with an ongoing strike is a boycott. People can boycott the NYT in support of the strike. But crossing a picket line is a much, much bigger deal than not participating in a boycott. If you skip the NYT Mini Crossword for a week to support the strikers, I respect that, but I'm going to keep pushing for that sweet 15s finish this week and I'm going to sleep fine doing it.

I agree that a boycott is different, and for the NYT the terms are pretty distinct. But when employees are picketing a retail business, the two are much more entangled, so I think the common use of the phrase has shifted away from the precision you're expecting it to have.

It’s not a shift in usage, it’s a term of art. Informally it could mean just crossing the line to enter the business, but unless you live in a turn-of-the-century company town, no one in the union is expecting anything related to that by default.

In labor, “respecting the picket line” is a moral action for union members (or scabs) which by definition couldn’t apply to a spontaneous self-directed consumer boycott.

Not to put to fine a point on it: if you show up to someone else’s labor action claiming solidarity, and then independently decide to pivot the action to a totally different set of economic incentives, you are — almost literally! — a scab.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#149

Post by mtalantikite »

thegrim33 wrote: post #112
mint2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of what infographic makers declare, the NYT newsroom is not “left” leaning. Their coverage is much more complicated than left vs right, but one theme is they don’t question the loudest narratives, and they hold grudges when they perceive someone to not give them enough access. The right tends to be louder and more uniform and persistent in messaging, so that coloring often gets unconsciously added to artic…

Well here's a challenge for you, we can easily put your viewpoint to the test: Go on the NYT website right now and find me a single article currently on the front page that's negative about leftist policies or politicians, or a single article that's positive about rightist policies or politicians. I bet you can't find any. Repeat this experiment, any minute, any hour, any day, any year, for the last 10 years, and you…

Just a quick look, here's one that plays into the mainstream narrative that Hamas is hiding out in hospitals and schools and therefore it's understandable to bomb them: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/world/middleeast/airstrik...

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#150

Post by tptacek »

danaris wrote: post #77
wpietri wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that a boycott is different, and for the NYT the terms are pretty distinct. But when employees are picketing a retail business, the two are much more entangled, so I think the common use of the phrase has shifted away from the precision you're expecting it to have.

...To our detriment. In many cases (though not all!), when workers are striking against a retail business, they want the customers to keep coming. Showing the strain that gets put on the system in such cases can be part of the leverage the union exerts. This is why we, on the outside, need to listen to what the union is asking of us, and not just loudly announce that we are boycotting in solidarity, or "refusing to c…

Or don't! It's fine to be pro-labor but for your interests not to intersect with every strike. One might have a different opinion about the moral weight of an NYT strike versus that of the Marriott hotel housekeeping staff, for instance. You might personally find yourself morally aligned with every strike, and in that case you should pay attention to what the strikers are asking. Or you might not. Things are complicated!

Either way: it is not in fact a given that customers are obliged by solidarity to boycott businesses dealing with strikes.

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