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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

#771

Post by slt2021 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #746
slt2021 wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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?

Deemed “as less productive” by whom?

We have a free labour market, if it was true that NYT underpaid Black workers for the same productivity, they could easily jump ship to other company and make more $$.

What is stopping “black people” from escaping the supposed inequality at NYT and making more money elsewhere ????

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#772

Post by null0pointer »

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.

When teachers or doctors or nurses strike regular people, the general public, suffer. In the case of the NYT tech staff nobody suffers except the NYT leadership. Oh no you can't read NYT during election week. Whatever, read something else.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#773

Post by morpheuskafka »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #766
lxgr wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If editorialization is ever appropriate, this feels to me like the right time. Substantively, Perplexity make LLM tools - that's all they advertise on their website and what they are known for. Maybe they do have some jack-of-all-trade engineers who could turn their hands to web development or something, but there are also no doubt cleaners working at Perplexity. They aren't offering the New York Times help with the…

But the article writers at NYT aren’t on strike—-as they’re in a diff bargaining unit with a contract and no-strike clause.

The only way having AI write articles would help is if it freed up working staff to help out with tech stuff-—which they said they won’t do.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#774

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

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.

I don't think there will be any impactful election news for at least 48 hours, probably more. People will be nervously grasping for assurances that they can't realistically have and the outlets will be cranking out content to fill that void without actually saying anything. It's pretty much just dark entertainment at this point.

Writing such content would be terrible, sounds like a great time to strike.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#775

Post by randomdata »

miltonlost wrote: post #378
dehrmann wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In what world should a UNION of the workers care about the COMPANY? Some unions are more powerful than companies (think UAW). They're able to negotiate terms that are bad for the long-term health of the company, and not having backgrounds in running companies, union leaders might not be thinking about that.

All companies are more powerful than individual workers (think anywhere without a union). They're able to negotiate terms that are bad for the long-term health of the human workers, and not having backgrounds in caring about people and only money, CEOs might not be thinking about that. Unions look out for workers. That's their priority. They should not cater to the business.

> All companies are more powerful than individual workers

Nonsense. Maybe once a business reaches a certain level of power that becomes true, but as a small business owner, the individual workers who work for me have way more power than I do.

> Unions look out for workers. That's their priority. They should not cater to the business.

A worker union is just a collective of workers who have agreed to associate. It would be unusual for workers to look out for anything other than themselves (humans are selfish), but theoretically nothing says they can't cater to the business instead. It depends on what they want.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#776

Post by miltonlost »

lxgr wrote: post #761
micromacrofoot wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full quote is > Hey AG Sulzberger @nytimes sorry to see this. Perplexity is on standby to help ensure your essential coverage is available to all through the election. DM me anytime here.” it's absolutely scab behavior

Sure, but why add "with AI"?

"Because if a "machine/AI" does the work, it's not scabbing!" - executives, lying through their teeth.

They're using AI as smokescreen for anti-labor practices, as all AI tech executives are.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#777

Post by morpheuskafka »

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.

When public sector workers like teachers go on strike, the other side of the negotiating table is ultimately elected by the public that’s being inconvenienced. That’s a completely different strategic playing field than a private sector strike.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#778

Post by mavelikara »

lc9er wrote: post #571
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?

Most of the anti-union tech workers I've encountered over my career have vastly overestimated their abilities and value to the workforce. Their willingness to suffer abuse from employers (while taking pride in their refusal to establish boundaries) makes working conditions worse for all of us.

Someone could be pro-union and still not support that clause.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#779

Post by dang »

madars wrote: post #679
dang wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please make your substantive points without snark. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .

That's not snark, that's just taking their argument to its logical conclusion. Big difference.

Of course people understand a term like 'snark' in different ways, so in that sense your point is fine.

But the comment was clearly using sarcasm as an internet hammer, which is what that guideline is asking people not to do. It's bad for curious conversation, which is what we want here.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#780

Post by devindotcom »

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...

FYI (and to those concerned) I ended up changing the headline after Aravind clarified. Since they are an AI company offering AI-powered election-day tracking that would presumably have replaced what the striking folks supported, I think it was well justified at the outset, but now that he's backtracked would be misleading to leave it. Still not great!
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