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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

#411

Post by slt2021 »

marxisttemp wrote: post #410
slt2021 wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

programmers are close to doctors than plumbers: high comp, high knowledge industry, constant learning Doctors have cartel though, instead of union that protects their jobs by limiting number of residency slots that limits number of new licensed doctors

Not even close to comparable. Becoming a doctor takes many more years than becoming a programmer. They have legal ramifications if they make mistakes instead of “teehee oopsie all our data leaked sorry”. The vast majority of programmers have a bachelor’s degree or lower. It is actually laughable to me that you would compare programmers to doctors. In any case, we should aspire to follow the model of unions and not ca…

becoming a good engineer takes a lot of years too. your average 4 year college degree does not guarantee you become an engineer, plenty of new grads are without jobs.

the best engineers I know have been coding since middle school and by the college graduation have 10+ experience coding at internationally competitive level.

this is comparable to medical profession.

if you ever meet an exceptionally good engineer - just ask him for how many years has he been coding? plenty will say at least high school if not earlier - all the way till their PhD that makes it two decades of learning+coding+improving.

as for model: I am anti union and anti-cartel. Just free market as it works in the silicon valley. The competition is actually good, even from offshore workers - because it forces productivity to increase and constantly filters out the bottom ranks of the profession - they leave coding to something they are more capable of: people management, product management, program management, etc etc

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

#412

Post by whimsicalism »

tptacek wrote: post #9
delichon wrote: post #5

How does one refrain from crossing the virtual picket line of such a strike? Is it to not do business with any company with this union's workers, for the duration?

Continuing to do business with a company whose employees are striking isn't "crossing the picket line". Crossing the picket line means undermining a strike directly by supply labor when organized labor is using a labor embargo as leverage. To avoid crossing the NYT picket line, don't write for the NYT.

crossing the picket line is not the same thing as scabbing and as a phrase often can apply to consumers.

I believe the NYT guild has asked ppl to pause reading NYT in the past, however in many many cases the unions do not want a consumer boycott. so it really depends

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

#413

Post by consteval »

umbra07 wrote: post #288
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…

People working minimum wage at fast food restaurants are not "essentially slaves".

They're prisoners compelled to work.

If they don't work, they won't get parole. If they call out or otherwise don't work their 40 hours, they get reprimanded. They lose "good time" - no phone calls, no visits, no outside time, etc.

They don't earn minimum wage - much less, because the prison garnishes half of the wage for the opportunity to be forced to work.

Parole rate in Georgia is about 8%, and it's a tough on crime state. Their parole rate should be around 80%, but it's not. Getting 25 years for possession or other non-violent crimes, you have no choice but to participate in the South's modern-day slavery.

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

#414

Post by whimsicalism »

noobermin wrote: post #52
wpietri wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think at least these days, usage of the term can include customers. For example, this from the University of Maine's Bureau of Labor Education: "Customers may refuse to cross a picket line and picketers have the right to ask customers to honor their picket but should not intimidate, block customer access, disparage a company’s product, or say anything that is untrue or casts the product in a false or misleading lig…

My honest opinion, asking customers not to do business doesn't really make sense as customer demand can add to the pressure on management when their workers are not to be found and all they have are temps who are, actually, crossing the picket line. I never understood this stance. It sounds much more like a morality stance than one based on strategy to get management to the table.

tbh consumer boycotts can be very effective for organizing. not having workers to serve your customers is a lot less scary to a business than potentially losing your customers

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

#415

Post by bushbaba »

dwallin wrote: post #394
jimbokun wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * 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?

It's notable that you completely skipped over the following point: > Two-thirds of the members fired by New York Times management since the Times Tech Guild formed have been from underrepresented groups.

Affirmative action at the companies I’ve worked at was hard to hire less qualified individuals into roles. Those folks were often under performing but marked as “meets” at request of hr. Now with economy and other factors, they are being performance managed out given a worse output/impact than peers at same level.

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

#417

Post by dario_od »

kettlepot1337 wrote: post #371
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.

>> “Incredibly non-diverse”? No. They are in a better position than most Absolutely not. This is typical trickery of stats. They have diversity at lower levels. But unlike SV almost no diversity at senior ranks. I think its past time that we consider janitorial and admin jobs as a win. If we have legions of educated minorities, why aren't they making it into executive roles at the NY Times? Here is the exec staff: ht…

I opened the link and filtered by executive. Thirteen people there: - 5 white men - 4 white women - 1 black man - 2 black women - 1 asian woman

Pretending that a sample size of 12 should exactly reflect the diversity of the whole population of the country is just weird to me.

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

#418

Post by sickofparadox »

kettlepot1337 wrote: post #371
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.

>> “Incredibly non-diverse”? No. They are in a better position than most Absolutely not. This is typical trickery of stats. They have diversity at lower levels. But unlike SV almost no diversity at senior ranks. I think its past time that we consider janitorial and admin jobs as a win. If we have legions of educated minorities, why aren't they making it into executive roles at the NY Times? Here is the exec staff: ht…

I'm sure that both of those people would feel very vindicated in their career knowing that the person advocating for further affirmative action calls them "tokens".

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

#419

Post by cess11 »

morgante wrote: post #259
shagie wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are potentially many reasonable things to negotiate for. So far, all the information I can find is "stalled contract negotiations". Working without a contract is a perfectly valid reason to strike. Things like making sure that AI isn't used in certain capacities to reduce the staff size wouldn't be unreasonable. As of yet, the contents of the negotiation aren't public - so we can only guess. In the meantime, th…

> Things like making sure that AI isn't used in certain capacities to reduce the staff size wouldn't be unreasonable. Yes it would. Explicitly demanding inefficiency is exactly why unions are terrible for innovation and progress.

That's a strawman. The demand you're quoting is to not fire people.

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

#420

Post by marxisttemp »

slt2021 wrote: post #411
marxisttemp wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even close to comparable. Becoming a doctor takes many more years than becoming a programmer. They have legal ramifications if they make mistakes instead of “teehee oopsie all our data leaked sorry”. The vast majority of programmers have a bachelor’s degree or lower. It is actually laughable to me that you would compare programmers to doctors. In any case, we should aspire to follow the model of unions and not ca…

becoming a good engineer takes a lot of years too. your average 4 year college degree does not guarantee you become an engineer, plenty of new grads are without jobs. the best engineers I know have been coding since middle school and by the college graduation have 10+ experience coding at internationally competitive level. this is comparable to medical profession. if you ever meet an exceptionally good engineer - jus…

The best tradespeople I know have worked their trade since high school.
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