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...
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New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike
821–830 of 1001 posts
Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike
#822Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike
#823Related :/ Perplexity CEO offers to replace striking NYT staff with AI https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/04/perplexity-ceo-offers-to-r...
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Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike
#824Related :/ Perplexity CEO offers to replace striking NYT staff with AI https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/04/perplexity-ceo-offers-to-r...
Heh, TC changed the URL and removed the 'with AI' from the title midday....
(comment below from author https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42046177)
Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike
#825Earlier quoted context omitted.
Comparing to other "news organizations" might not make sense if we're including Wirecutter and the games division (e.g. Wordle) on the NYT side. They should be compared to other types of media orgs. Not that NYT hasn't done some interesting innovative technical stuff within their journalism.
Wordle was famously made and run by one person. How many are needed to keep it running now?
needs at least a team to remove whatever 5-letter word becomes offensive next year!
Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike
#826Earlier 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 you are also appealing for public sentiment.
You can't count on public sentiment for anything labor oriented in the US - corporations have owned the narrative for the last 40 years. The reason teachers unions avoid clashing is partially because they care about not effecting the kids as much as possible, and partially because they are already keeling over with states dropping the public school system.
Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike
#827Earlier 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?
Bc management never abuses the optics to force out people that they dont like, vs someone productive, ever.
And the alternative is a lower barrier for abuse
Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike
#828Earlier 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…
> 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
Their methodology and third party checks are explained here:
https://www.nyguild.org/2022-nyt-performance-evaluations-rep...
Edit: removed dumb take
Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike
#829Earlier quoted context omitted.
> claims like these always irk me, like did you just compare averages by race/gender? Probably not, the striking union is the one that contains all the data analysts at the NYTimes, so they have some experience with sociology data. > Whoever made this claim, did they control for other factors, like job title/level or productivity? As explained in the article, the data analysts union mad this claim, it's even explicit…
> finance and sales Weird that jobs with performance bonuses are the largest gap — but that perhaps suggests that the cause isnt sexism in the workplace, but yet more confounders they didn’t account for.
I think the orthodox Left response to this would be that the unseen hand of the patriarchy and general internalised gender roles cause women to hustle less/advocate for recognition of their performance less than men, or for men to overlook their contributions.
Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike
#830Earlier 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.
The public aren't the party you're negotiating with. You're negotiating with management.
What the public thinks is not particularly relevant, just like it's not relevant to my relationship with my manager.
The only time public sentiment is relevant from a strike is when the public's representatives can order you back to work. That's a risk for a teacher, or a railworker, but not for a newspaper tech.