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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

#981

Post by mrguyorama »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #939
bankcust08385 wrote: post #933

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teachers are also paid crap because they continue to work for starvation wages. They should strike more because they will not receive more compensation with gentle pleas that are convenient.

I just checked and in my school district the lowest paid (full time) teacher made ~$100k in 2022 (the highest paid made $180k). I would hardly call that "starvation wages".

That is so outside the norm. Average in the US is about $71k and varies WILDLY from state to state, school to school, district to district, and importantly, that variation is one of the huge problems in the first place.

You get that $70k in the big city school where those dollars do not go very far, while out in the boonies where a shitload of teaching is done, you make far, far, far less.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#982

Post by mrguyorama »

tourmalinetaco wrote: post #954
bankcust08385 wrote: post #933

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teachers are also paid crap because they continue to work for starvation wages. They should strike more because they will not receive more compensation with gentle pleas that are convenient.

Teachers make a fair salary. It’s a degreed position with ~100 days PTO annually, so when you account for that the benefits actually outweigh most degreed positions. One could argue the ceiling is closer, particularly for primary education, but that’s a problem of govt funding more than anything.

>It’s a degreed position with ~100 days PTO annually

They do not get 100 days of PTO. They get an hour per work week of PTO and a mandatory 2 month leave. You can't do anything with that leave because there is no simultaneous need for more workers for those two months in any other industry, so you are basically furloughed.

Keep in mind, the states that aren't killing education generally require serious credentials, like a 4 year degree, to make on average $70k a year.

This also completely ignores the mountains of unpaid work teachers do. Every single hour of homework they have to give out to ensure kids get the practice they need to internalize a lesson is at least an hour of grading work, and that's for the easy stuff like fill in the bubble tests that you can literally automate.

My mother regularly spent until 7pm working her teaching job, because that is what is required to be a good teacher.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#983

Post by tivert »

Nathanba wrote: post #935
tivert wrote: post #929

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only getting fired for a good reason? Who decides what a good reason is? There are these things that exist called courts and independent arbitrators... > Pay discrepancies for "women or people of color" could easily have real world reasons, maybe they really are just worse at their job, less engaged, less ambitious, whatever it is that causes less pay. > ... > I need to have the legal power to pay worse people less…

We can just take this exchange as an example, maybe that helps to clarify my actual position. Imagine if I had to contact an independent committee before I could "fire"(=ignore) your comment with several snide insults. I'd get bogged down, my work day would be slower. Imagine if somebody could drag me to court over every comment decision because hey, maybe I just ignored it for no good reason, or because you are blac…

> Imagine if I had to contact an independent committee before I could... ignore your comment...

I can imagine an orange when we're talking apples, sure.

> We can already see that the New York Times Tech Guild does not seem to want careful application of these rules if their website doesn't even mention any evaluation of worker productivity or value, all their study apparently did was to look at pay difference without looking at work difference.

Come on, it's an adversarial negotiation. You seem to really want to argue the side of the employer, and for some strange reason seem also want everyone to argue that side as well.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#984

Post by gaws »

mellosouls wrote: post #49

As much as I am a bolshy union member and supporter, this doesn't seem too bad on the surface, the article doesn't make clear what the issues with it are? Times management said in an email to workers on Sunday that it had offered a 2.5 percent annual wage increase, a minimum 5 percent pay increase for promotions and a $1,000 ratification bonus. It also said that the company would maintain its current in-office work r…

> this doesn't seem too bad on the surface

The NYT's latest offer is shit compared to what the employees are asking.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#985

Post by gaws »

vijucat wrote: post #47
bwestergard wrote: post #3

I am also a member of the union at NPR, on the subway headed to the picket line in solidarity right now. Happy to answer any questions. I encourage everyone to respect the picket line and get your news elsewhere until the workers get a deal. The Times Workers are holding the line against arbitrary return to office mandates and for Just Cause protections. The vast majority of HN consists of developers, designers, QA,…

Genuine question: what prevents the NYT from offshoring these jobs if they can be done from home? I feel for you, as a fellow worker, but unless there is something hyper-local about the job such as regulatory requirements or trust issues with IP protection, the jobs will go to the ones who work hard without complaining too much.

> what prevents the NYT from offshoring these jobs if they can be done from home?

Cheaper and submissive labor doesn't result in high-quality products.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#986

Post by gaws »

corndoge wrote: post #13
bwestergard wrote: post #3

I am also a member of the union at NPR, on the subway headed to the picket line in solidarity right now. Happy to answer any questions. I encourage everyone to respect the picket line and get your news elsewhere until the workers get a deal. The Times Workers are holding the line against arbitrary return to office mandates and for Just Cause protections. The vast majority of HN consists of developers, designers, QA,…

They're striking against return to office? I work from home and value it but it never would occur to me to strike for that. I view it as a privilege and not a right. Almost everyone in the world has to go on location for their jobs. I am curious why it is so important to NYT workers in particular that they would strike over it - is there something particularly bad about the location?

> I am curious why it is so important to NYT workers in particular that they would strike over it - is there something particularly bad about the location?

You're aware that NYC is an extremely expensive place to live, right?

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#987

Post by hollerith »

Justsignedup wrote: post #973
hollerith wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What action am I supposed to take on behalf of these cognitively-privileged workers already earning six-figure salaries?

Support them by boycotting. I don't understand your statement here. Are you saying that because you have it fairly well, that you should let your labor be as exploited as possible? If I earn 200k a year, and my employer earns 1MM a year from my labor, why should I not protest for better work conditions, or more % of my labor? If my labor is valuable I should be able to capitalize on it as well. A worker earning 20k w…

>If I earn 200k a year, and my employer earns 1MM a year from my labor,

How would you or I know whether NYT earns 1MM a year from a striking worker or 100k?

You're just assuming that the labor's value is above the pay. Have you ever met a strike or labor action that you did not like?

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#988

Post by sega_sai »

shmatt wrote: post #648
sega_sai wrote: post #605

Does it mean that there will be no election needle ? That would be disappointing.

everything is as usual, including the needle. I asked one of the guild leaders myself. My big question is, how much % of their engineers are participating in this? I can't find a single clear answer. For all we know there are another 400 engineers not part of this activity As far as I can tell this isn't a Boeing situation where a decision is made and all employees are part of it. the NYT building is still full of wo…

It seems the needle is not likely: https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/1853849211432734973

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#989

Post by jjmarr »

caskstrength wrote: post #955
jjmarr wrote: post #893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gender pay gap disappears when you control for hours worked, job seniority, and experience. So, why do women work less hours than men and have less experience? That's still an issue even if it's not directly sexist. If we read some bullet points from your post: > Men are more likely than women to have more years of continuous experience in their current occupation. What crawls on four legs and causes women to dro…

> What crawls on four legs and causes women to drop out of the labour force? "Women earn less due to sexist discrimination" and "women earn less due to bearing the brunt of raising children" are two distinct claims. The first one is contentious and widely disputed (disproved?).

Being socially expected to raise kids is a form of discrimination.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#990

Post by shadowgovt »

CrimsonRain wrote: post #977
shadowgovt wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ages ago, I spoke with someone who had experience doing union organizing in the steel industry about why tech workers didn't unionize. I told him that the first step would be for tech workers to stop thinking that their greatest competition is other tech workers. (Flip the question: "If your coworkers are low-performing but the union prevents the company from firing them, why don't you just go form your own company w…

How about you open a new company with your low performing buddies and form union with them elsewhere? Fields where skill disparity is extreme, only low performing leeches or lazy ones want union so they can leech off of colleagues who do real work.

Given that over half of startups fail, I believe the case could be made that people do what you've described all the time.
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