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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

#341

Post by datavirtue »

brianwawok wrote: post #179
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> urgency on the workers' part is to lock up contracts before the election in order to prevent mass layoffs right after. If workers fear mass layoffs, going on strike is a bad idea. Instead, in such a situation the union should attempt to make an agreement with the employer of the kind "no salary increase (as it would be appropriate in consideration of the inflation), but job security for the next years".

Which is a great way to have a company full of people who can’t be fired with no motivation, harming the parent organization

Your strawman is on fire.

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

#342

Post by [deleted] »

aurareturn wrote: post #267
janalsncm wrote: post #258

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-guild-votes... I wonder how other news outlets will cover this, if at all. They’re probably afraid others will get the same idea.

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?

[deleted]

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

#343

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

robertlagrant wrote: post #271
berdario wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Layoffs at big companies have nothing to do with individual impact. There might be exceptions, and with companies that are cash-strapped (or smaller companies in general) the situation might be different. But for big companies, it's just a matter of the executives deciding that they don't want to invest in a specific org/project anymore ( or they want to offshore ) and if you're in one of the affected orgs/projects,…

> it's just a matter of the executives deciding that they don't want to invest in a specific org/project anymore ( or they want to offshore ) and if you're in one of the affected orgs/projects, you're out of luck This seems really simplistic. It's certainly happened before, but it seems ludicrous to just assume that executive whim is always the cause. Another reason is if a company is doing badly financially, somethi…

It's not an either-or. When the company's doing badly financially and something needs to change, the mechanics of figuring out what needs to change involve a lot of executive judgment, which is not necessarily correlated with facts on the ground as the members of specific orgs or projects might see them.

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

#344

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

maximinus_thrax wrote: post #217
lacker wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't seem like a purely economical strike. It's not a coincidence that the most unionized tech workforce in the country is the New York Times, an organization that is fundamentally pro-union in its politics. When the organization as a whole is consistently delivering a pro-union message, doesn't it just make sense that the employees would tend to be ideologically pro-union?

> the New York Times, an organization that is fundamentally pro-union in its politics No, it is definitely not. NYT is neoliberal. Don't confuse the cultural left with the economic/social/fiscal left. NYT is not at all pro-labor. Other people have discussed this extensively in the comments below.

Labor organizations often use a deliberately over-the-top definition of "pro-labor", where you ought to support most labor actions without interrogation or criticism out of solidarity. Is the NYT there? No, of course not, that's not really a practical position for a news organization to take.

Does the NYT newsroom generally report from a perspective that unions are good and we ought to have more of them? I don't see how you could argue otherwise.

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

#345

Post by ImJamal »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #291
ImJamal wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This would have been a much better comment without the last sentence.

The person I was responding to said I thought Harris is a communist. Where did he get that from? Nowhere. He invented it out of whole cloth. He also implied that I am a supporter of "far right insane wackos" for asking for a basic confirmation.

He formed an entire narrative about me from asking a simple question. A question that nobody sane could really come to the conclusions that he came to.

Perhaps it would be better if I didn't word my response the way I did, but I am just so tired of being accused of all sorts of things just because people think I am opposed to what they believe for asking for clarification. He doesn't know what I think and instead of asking he went on a rant about what he perceived my views to be. It is utterly ridiculous and it is so tiring.

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

#346

Post by shawabawa3 »

kortilla wrote: post #251
consteval wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These "X has it worse" arguments are tiresome and lack any sort of rigor. There's modern day slavery in the world. Today. Even in the US we have compelled labor - it's a whole thing in the Georgia prison system. Those McDonald's burger flippers are essentially slaves, and I bet you didn't know that. But if we subscribe to the ideology of "X has it worse" nothing would get done, ever. The reality is even in seemingly…

> it's a whole thing in the Georgia prison system. Those McDonald's burger flippers are essentially slaves, and I bet you didn't know that The prisoners yes, the McDonald’s workers absolutely not. The avg McDonald’s worker tenure is quite short and having briefly been one, I can assure you it’s nothing like slavery. Get a grip.

"Those McDonald's burger flippers" refers to prisoners being forced to work in McDonald's, not all McDonald's workers

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

#347

Post by daseiner1 »

giantg2 wrote: post #330
donohoe wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Incredibly non-diverse”? No. They are in a better position than most https://www.nytco.com/2023-new-york-times-diversity-and-incl... The my don’t complain about tech being non-diverse, they report that it is non-diverse - which is true.

If you read some of the linked articles off of the one posted a few comments back, then you will see that the recent cuts have disproportionately affected minorities, minorities are making less, and that minorities are receiving lower evaluation scores. So it seems they do have a diversity problem.

perhaps diversity has a performance problem.

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

#348

Post by _cs2017_ »

How much of a comp boost would an average NYT tech worker get if the union succeeded? Let's say 10% for the sake of the argument. Please correct me if I'm way off.

Wouldn't they be able to get a much higher comp by interviewing with other local tech firms? If so, why don't they? Seems more effective than waiting and hoping for a small increase through the union.

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

#349

Post by nemo44x »

aurareturn wrote: post #267
janalsncm wrote: post #258

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-guild-votes... I wonder how other news outlets will cover this, if at all. They’re probably afraid others will get the same idea.

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?

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.

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

#350

Post by giantg2 »

daseiner1 wrote: post #347
giantg2 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read some of the linked articles off of the one posted a few comments back, then you will see that the recent cuts have disproportionately affected minorities, minorities are making less, and that minorities are receiving lower evaluation scores. So it seems they do have a diversity problem.

perhaps diversity has a performance problem.

I want to see the actual studies that the guild has used to generate the numbers for their claims so I can see what possible mechanisms might be at play and what sort of level setting they've done for the data. Unfortunately, I didn't see any of the studies released.
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