Live data from Hacker News

New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

axios.com

481–490 of 675 posts

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

#481

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?

This line of questioning is often brought up in response to pay gap conversations. Universal trends do not explain individual data points, but in general, studies do seem to indicate that pay gaps are real. https://www.epi.org/publication/what-is-the-gender-pay-gap-a... https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/07/01/racial-ge... https://www.americanprogress.org/article/women-of-color-and-...

I scanned the first article.

It's difficult to parse, because it says that experience and occupational choice does pay a significant role in the gap. But then editorializes and claims that less experience and occupational choice are due to discriminatory issues in the broader culture.

Culture war issues like this are unfalsifiable in either direction and largely reflect the political persuasion of the person making the argument than anything quantifiable.

Here's another example from the American Progress article:

> Women of color disproportionately work in jobs within the service, care, and domestic work sectors—jobs with historically low pay.

This is an empirically verifiable claim.

> This is due to occupational segregation, which is the funneling of women and men into different jobs based on gender and racial norms and expectations

This is an unfalsifiable political claim. Some unknown force, by some unknown mechanism, forces people to make certain choices.

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

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the editorial bias from management of NYT has always been skeptical of Google and Facebook and perhaps all of big tech because big tech was a threat to their business. Most newspapers in the US have been hollowed out because of social media and the tech industry, NYT ironically has not because they hired a real in house tech team that has kept their paper relevant. But that doesn't mean they like paying their tech wo…

> Most newspapers in the US have been hollowed out because of social media and the tech industry, They've been declining ever since radio and TV started doing news broadcasts, early to mid 20th century. Internet tech has played a role too, but the whole newspaper industry should have seen the writing on the wall several generations ago.

sure. Not making excuses for any business decisions by newspaper management, just pointing out that that their criticism of the tech industry isn't out of character with a company that also is hostile their own workers' union.

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

#483
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this industry as a whole is driven by capitalists who all have a common interest in taking a bigger share of the pie than they deserve? :) ie it's not because you are well paid that you are paid enough or fairly

Workers also have a common interest to take a bigger share of the pie that they deserve. Everybody has this interest. It doesn't make any side of the labor market moral or immoral, its just how any market works, and that's absolutely alright.

That would be absolutely alright if we all had the same cards at the beginning of the game.

The result is there some people take large part of the pie while not contributing to the baking in any meaningful way. Doesn't seem fair to me

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

#484

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?

If not, then that's also an equity problem. If the "dog jobs" are mostly offered to women and minorities, that should also be called out as a problem for employers to solve.

Employers are not responsible for forcing people to do the work required to be qualified for a position the employers are trying to fill.

Among the people who are qualified for the position, they are prohibited by law from considering race or gender or other protected characteristics when making a hiring decision.

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

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And unions will only solidify that into stone to prevent any sort of optimization that would bring the complexity down. It looks like you've bought into some anti-union talking points. Efficiency is sometimes good. But sometimes it's just a way of shifting profit from workers to capital. As an example: if I replace 100 workers managing a server farm with an AWS account - the money that would have paid 100 humans to…

> Efficiency is sometimes good. Efficiency is always good. What you're basically saying is that you want to have your cake and eat it too. Which doesn't actually happen.

> Efficiency is always good

https://hbr.org/2019/01/the-high-price-of-efficiency

Efficiency is almost always at the cost of resilience. And that's just one dimension where efficiency is not always good.

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

#486
post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more like: - african americans are statistically more likely to originate from lower on socio economic ladder than, say, asian americans Thus when you get a bunch of job applicants, you might get an asian american with a Yale degree (James) and an african american with a community college degree (John). Affirmative action or other DEI pressures might force you to hire both James and John, but James will…

I don't really think a Yale degree makes you better than someone with a community college degree. There's no magic at Yale. The education you get everywhere is pretty good now because of all the resources universally available to all students. But Yale basically applies a filter function and attracts the top 0.01% of high school graduates every year (plus some less elite legacy students and DEI admits). When you hire…

As someone who has studied at both kinds of schools I can tell you there is a WORLD of difference. In a middling school the professor was constantly providing remedial education to the students and had to cut down the curriculum breadth and depth.

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

#487
post #475
post #459

Awesome news. In my experience, Mismanagement, both in personnel and compensation, seems to be commonplace, as corporations seek to lower costs in response to our changing economy. Corporations looking to find an advantage may shortchange employees, overwork them, and not train managers but rather expect everybody to "just work well together", deflecting responsibility. Unionizing provides a relief valve where unions…

If you read books from the early 1900s (Radium Girls, Rocket Boys, Seabiscuit), it's painfully obvious to see how incredibly exploitative industries can become (literally working people to death) without something like a union to check corporate greed against worker well-being. It's a fine balance though. Unions are organizations very similar to companies and can fall victim to the same sins as exploitative companies…

It should also be painfully obvious that, during those times, the alternative — subsistence agriculture — was much worse, and people working in factories no longer starved. The industrial revolution, AKA "greed", has ended starvation and slavery, so when socialists of late 1800s or early 1900s talk of exploitation, that should raise an eyebrow.

Unions are not similar to companies because they don't compete on the free market. For this reason, much like all state-funded institutions, unions are much more prone to corruption.

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

#488

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.

That's worthy of further investigation to understand if there's bias in these decisions or some other explanatory factor.

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

#489
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And unions will only solidify that into stone to prevent any sort of optimization that would bring the complexity down. It looks like you've bought into some anti-union talking points. Efficiency is sometimes good. But sometimes it's just a way of shifting profit from workers to capital. As an example: if I replace 100 workers managing a server farm with an AWS account - the money that would have paid 100 humans to…

It appears you’ve bought into some anti-capitalism talking points. Wealth concentrating in shareholder hands may very well make the world better. A huge amount of that is in pension funds. This helps your parents remain independent in retirement. And while I agree that eliminating those 100 workers is terribly painful for many of them, it’s incumbent upon them to plan ahead for those contingencies. Likewise the inves…

> It appears you’ve bought into some anti-capitalism talking points. Wealth concentrating in shareholder hands may very well make the world better. A huge amount of that is in pension funds. This helps your parents remain independent in retirement.

So all the people in my generation who won't be able to save up the ~1mil required to retire comfortably? or the people from previous generations who worked until they literally dropped dead because of a lack of access to excess funds and planning? those people don't seem to exist in your story of capitalism working perfectly for everybody. There are alternatives to maximizing profits, that allow everybody to retire comfortably - rather than just the lucky few.

> From long before I embarked on my tech career I was always studying for the next job.

I'm happy you've been able to manage that. If you're a barista, what is the next job if you're replaced with a robot vending machine? Should baristas not have good quality of life? Does you getting a good cup of coffee necessitate suffering from someone else?

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

#490

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.

> * 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 funny, every hedge fund and tech startup I've ever worked at since roughly 2001 very proudly boasts about how they pay women more than the men.

But as my career goes on into the years I find that I'm working with less women and less minorities and not more. Despite the best of efforts...

If I were to look for evidence though, I would point things squarely at the interview process... In the past if you could operate a computer you were hired and assumed you would figure it out. Nowadays it's much more about fitting a certain narrative that's largely down to socioeconomic factors... I don't think I've ever worked with someone in tech who went to an HBCU, but lots of people who were token at NYU, Yale, etc...

Post reply on HN