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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

#741

Post by School-Cotton »

feedforward wrote: post #528
stickfigure wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason This is such a weird request for technology workers. You want to work with low-performing coworkers?

When the wealth created by those who work at the New York Times is sent out in dividends to those who do no work or create wealth there, what is performance of these rentiers? You're arguing on the side of the rentiers and parasites who do not work, and lecturing about "low performance". It's the people doing the work's purview to discuss performance, not the parasites.

Nothing forces you to go work for those so-called “parasites” if you don’t want to. You are perfectly allowed to start your own worker-owned journalism collective if that’s what you prefer.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#742

Post by janalsncm »

legitster wrote: post #345
cool_dude85 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's crappy about the union striking when they have leverage? Should they have waited until the strike would apply less pressure to their employer?

1: If a union strikes when it has too much leverage, there's a risk there as well at overplaying the hand. If the Times does just fine during the election, then the union helps make the case their members are overrated. If the Times crashes and burns during the election, they might make the value of the contract weaker. 2: In an election where trust and reliability of independent media are really being called into qu…

If you don’t have a fire department and your house catches on fire, it is an obvious demonstration of their value. Likewise, if NYT goes down tomorrow or they don’t have content to drive traffic, it shows management they can’t mess around. The best case scenario for management is a dip in traffic but no major issues.

Also, it takes two to tango. For any of the negative outcomes you mention, NYT management is equally to blame. Why is it the union’s responsibility to acquiesce to whatever terms to maintain trust and reliability?

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#743

Post by vundercind »

WalterBright wrote: post #692
pc86 wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "just asking for due process." Everyone has interacted with a government office with an absolutely worthless employee who is just sitting around counting down the days to retirement where they can continue getting taxpayer money for doing nothing. Just because there's a process to get rid of someone doesn't mean it will ever happen. This is a ploy to make it harder to fire bad programmers. If I have to try t…

I read a statistic some years ago that public school teachers have the lowest rate of firing of any profession. The union has been successful in instituting a "process" for firing a teacher that is so onerous, time consuming, and complicated that it never happens. The only way a teacher can get fired these days is for showing up drunk or high, or having relations with a student. (And yes, in spite of this, there are…

There are multiple unions involved with teaching, depending on the state, not just one national one (the NEA or what have you). In some states teachers unions are effectively toothless and aren't even part of the contract negotiation process.

This should make it pretty easy to see how union strength affects firing rates (no, I don't happen to have the data on hand). IME schools tend to avoid firing teachers even when they easily could, in favor of pushing them out, because they don't want the bad press from a firing, so my guess is firing rates for teachers are low everywhere.

We might further hope to see whether union strength affects education quality, but there are too many confounders—the states with weak teachers unions tend to be red states and to have weak economies, either or both of which may have stronger effects on educational outcomes than union activity. But, on the specific question of the effect of teachers unions on teacher firing rates, we can maybe get something like a useful experiment out of these state-by-state differences.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#744

Post by seabass-labrax »

lxgr wrote: post #719
ChrisArchitect wrote: post #710

Related :/ Perplexity CEO offers to replace striking NYT staff with AI https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/04/perplexity-ceo-offers-to-r...

Did he actually say that? Because in the article, there's only a tweet of him saying that Perplexity is "on standby to help", of which "offering to replace striking staff with AI" seems a pretty strong mischaracterization. Update: The headline (but not the URL) was just changed to "Perplexity CEO offers AI company’s services to replace striking NYT staff" (emphasis mine).

> ...to help ensure your essential coverage is available to all through the election.

That sounds liking replacing striking staff to me, at least for the duration of the election. What other services of value except LLMs to write articles does Perplexity have to offer to the New York Times?

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#745

Post by janalsncm »

crazygringo wrote: post #371
dbalatero wrote: post #63

Here is context on the strike, how long it's been brewing, and more that I happened to read yesterday: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-new-york-times...

Thank you so much! That is a vastly more informative article. It seems like it's not so much the NYT is opposed to the contract's specifics -- they're opposed to having a contract at all because the union is new. The NYT has been stringing the union along without ever actually signing anything, so now the union has to strike to get the NYT to take them seriously. Key parts: > The Tech Guild won its unionization vote…

> The third demand in dispute is a frequent source of anxiety for Hoehne in particular: return to office.

Other tech workers should take note. RTO is negotiable, like everything else. If companies can enforce RTO with zero cost, they just might do it.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#746

Post by ceejayoz »

slt2021 wrote: post #735
crazygringo wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much! That is a vastly more informative article. It seems like it's not so much the NYT is opposed to the contract's specifics -- they're opposed to having a contract at all because the union is new. The NYT has been stringing the union along without ever actually signing anything, so now the union has to strike to get the NYT to take them seriously. Key parts: > The Tech Guild won its unionization vote…

>>According to the study, Black tech workers at the newspaper make 26 percent less than white workers >>women, who make up over 40 percent of the Tech Guild, earn 12 percent less on average than men claims like these always irk me, like did you just compare averages by race/gender? Whoever made this claim, did they control for other factors, like job title/level or productivity? its like the famous "gender pay gap" c…

> Whoever made this claim, did they control for other factors, like job title/level or productivity?

You get that "all the black people are in lower roles or somehow all deemed less productive" is worse, right?

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#747

Post by syndicatedjelly »

shadowgovt wrote: post #677
syndicatedjelly wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What leverage does the Times tech workers have in this negotiation? Why does their job specifically matter, versus someone abroad who can do some web dev and data wrangling for a fraction of the cost and similar quality?

You have more-or-less hit upon the reason unions exist.

Which is what?

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#748

Post by vundercind »

Dalewyn wrote: post #722
vundercind wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't think my original comment needed it, but yes, I actually agree the NYT not publishing might be a net improvement in the world, not just not-harmful.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#749

Post by bongodongobob »

warpeggio wrote: post #665
bongodongobob wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think tech workers have gotten a little spoiled. At my company, we have about 35 people in our IT department. 3/4 are directors and managers and I honestly have no fucking idea what they do all day. 600 people on the IT staff at the NYT is insane, and I guarantee the majority of those jobs is "attend meetings every day to jerk each other off with 1 deliverable a week".

> 3/4 are directors and managers this is a problem. Hiring and career paths are completely non-existent for tech people. Most will not get a cost of living increase, and the only way to actually increase their pay is to update their resume and spend months trying to find another position. I dont' know if you've noticed, but our job market blows right now. They may have bought us off for a decade or so, giving us bene…

I'm pro union. I'm just saying I've worked with a lot of people with Director in their title that I know don't do any actual work other than balance a budget or shuffle shit around in spreadsheets once every couple months. I've been at my new job almost a year now, and I can't believe what people are getting away with. Obviously not everywhere is like this, but it's not my first job where the rest of the company is completely clueless as to how little the IT dept actually does day to day.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#750

Post by lxgr »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #744
lxgr wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did he actually say that? Because in the article, there's only a tweet of him saying that Perplexity is "on standby to help", of which "offering to replace striking staff with AI" seems a pretty strong mischaracterization. Update: The headline (but not the URL) was just changed to "Perplexity CEO offers AI company’s services to replace striking NYT staff" (emphasis mine).

> ...to help ensure your essential coverage is available to all through the election. That sounds liking replacing striking staff to me, at least for the duration of the election. What other services of value except LLMs to write articles does Perplexity have to offer to the New York Times?

> That sounds liking replacing striking staff to me

That's my read too, but they could also e.g. lend them some engineers, have them build an election dashboard for them etc.

The fact that that would still be crossing the picket line, how realistic any of that is, or how genuine the offer, are all great questions/observations, but "replace with AI" seems like a quite dishonest editorialization in any case.

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