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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

#721

Post by lolinder »

vundercind wrote: post #709
legitster wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but you are also appealing for public sentiment. So there's a reason why teacher's unions carefully time their strikes so they don't clash with important events like SAT season. I'm not arguing they need to pick the slowest week, but striking a balance seems pretty reasonable and pretty standard for most other unions.

I'm pretty sure the wider harm of the NYT halting operations for an entire week—which isn't remotely what's happening—would be effectively zero, even during the week of a presidential election. What's the problem? Teachers and health care workers try to be more careful because a bunch of vulnerable people (children, patients) with little to no say in anything about how their respective institutions run are heavily de…

Exactly, if anything this strike is timed to do the least damage to the general public relative to the amount of impact it has on the business. The election has already been decided, we're just waiting to tally the votes. Most people have already decided if they're going to vote and if so who for.

If they had striked last week or the week before they'd have been accused of election interference. Striking this week hurts the Times because they run the risk of losing traffic from people trying to see results, but it doesn't impact the results at all. It's the best possible time to strike this year.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#722

Post by Dalewyn »

vundercind wrote: post #709
legitster wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but you are also appealing for public sentiment. So there's a reason why teacher's unions carefully time their strikes so they don't clash with important events like SAT season. I'm not arguing they need to pick the slowest week, but striking a balance seems pretty reasonable and pretty standard for most other unions.

I'm pretty sure the wider harm of the NYT halting operations for an entire week—which isn't remotely what's happening—would be effectively zero, even during the week of a presidential election. What's the problem? Teachers and health care workers try to be more careful because a bunch of vulnerable people (children, patients) with little to no say in anything about how their respective institutions run are heavily de…

I would argue it's a great benefit rather than a problem, too.

NYT not publishing sensationalist bullshit? While it's just one outlet out of countless many, the world will be that much more peaceful for but a short while.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#723

Post by 9x39 »

dan-0 wrote: post #708
z3ncyberpunk wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what, if it costs you 300k to be comfortable then you are being suckered. When people are struggling to make it by on $30 and $40k and see these privileged propagandists complain about making six figures, no one has sympathy.

Sorry, I don't see a valid point in any of these salary arguments. In fact, they're down right insulting and ignorant. I did strenuous manual labor for next to nothing once upon a time. After about 8 years of that, on top of regular 60 hour work weeks, I spent almost every waking moment of 4-5 years to learn and better myself with about every sacrifice you could imagine short of divorce. I'm now making significantly…

There are many commenters that talk past each other given the emotionally charged topics of unions, pay, negotiations, etc. I think this is one of them.

What I read from parent is that lifestyle inflation must be high in some of these demographics when the rhetoric used is about survival, despite evidence of many more people 'surviving' on far less income.

What I read from you is that you fiercely maintain negotiating power because you can and feel it's only right given your high value. Why WOULD anyone leave money on the table, after all?

Both can be true.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#724

Post by fakedang »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #206
fakedang wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Agreed that is silly. But it is equally silly, and telling in my opinion, that that is what you're focusing on.

That's how things work don't they? You tend to focus on which demand seems the most patently absurd one.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#725

Post by vundercind »

bko wrote: post #447
quandrum wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wor…

The looser overall firing rules are, the harder it is for the union to protect members from e.g. firing for insisting on adherence to safety/security/contractual/employment policies/laws. Threat-of-firing-backed pressure on all those fronts is incredibly common outside companies with strong unions.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#726

Post by subarctic »

legitster wrote: post #699
wesselbindt wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Striking during election week is kind of a crappy move to pull I couldn't disagree more. The point of a strike is to demonstrate the value of your labor by withholding it. Withholding your labor in a slow week would be counterproductive. Strikes (just like any effective form of protest) are supposed to be inconvenient, so in saying what you said, you're really just expressing you don't like strikes. Having this blo…

Sure, but you are also appealing for public sentiment. So there's a reason why teacher's unions carefully time their strikes so they don't clash with important events like SAT season. I'm not arguing they need to pick the slowest week, but striking a balance seems pretty reasonable and pretty standard for most other unions.

Sure but the NY times is just one of many news websites and even if it went down, people aren't gonna miss it in the same way as teachers going on strike

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#727

Post by trinsic2 »

kccqzy wrote: post #608
quandrum wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Requiring management to document these decisions is already itself placing low trust in management. I do not want to work at any workplace where trust in management is so low that low performance needs to be documented with a paper trail. I'd rather work at a workplace where the management is consistently competent and people place high trust in the management; so that when management fires someone everyone else agre…

I'm genuinely curious, are there any employees that work with a company that has good managers? I have heard so many bad stories of poisonous corporate culture its hard for me to see how there would be good managers. I haven't worked as an employee since the early 2000's.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#728

Post by eikenberry »

WalterBright wrote: post #700
eikenberry wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the alternative is to be under constant existential threat of being laid off... I could see is as the lesser evil. IMO, recent events are the reason for this item being included.

A sensible person would not have their finances stretched so thin that they cannot deal with an interruption in their employment. I.e. one should be setting aside at least 10% of their income. I worked for a company once that was doing poorly, and management decided to do an across-the-board 10% pay cut. One of my coworkers was livid with rage. I asked him why didn't he just quit and get another job? He said he didn'…

Savings don't protect you from the stress unless you've saved enough to retire. Savings provides a buffer of time you get to find another job, but you still have to find (and land) that job. Given how f'd-up tech hiring is and the current job market that might not be as easy as it sounds... So I can understand why people want to avoid that level of stress and the compromises they will make to do that.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#729

Post by 9x39 »

standardUser wrote: post #274
gsky wrote: post #37

I outright deny non remote positions. We got one life after all.

It's a luxury to be able to do that, though the more of us who do it the more companies must oblige. In that sense, these kinds of strikes are doing us all a favor.

We all indirectly benefit from the pressure tech workers put on the sector in negotiations for higher wages, perks like wfh, additional non-cash comp, etc. too.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#730

Post by anon84873628 »

lc9er wrote: post #585
code_for_monkey wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why are tech workers, my industry, so committed to this ideology? Do you think the tech layoffs of the last few years was a justified culling of lazy idiots?

I'm old enough to remember a time when people in tech were called 'wizards' and there was an air of mystery that surrounded the industry. A large subset of this group really seems to have bought into the idea that working in tech makes you 'special'. It does not. It's a skilled profession that is trainable and attainable by large swaths of the population. Working in tech does not make you special (Yes - you) and the…

I think people who entered the industry before 2010 (maybe even later) don't understand the current reality.

Previously, you were probably a dork in high school and mostly self taught for the love of technology. You might have gone through a prestigious academic CS program and cultivated a sense of superiority over the humanities and biz school kids. Outsourcing / off shoring was a thing but you had the innate protection of skin color and acculturation.

Today it's just another thing some people study because that's where the jobs are.

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