New York Times refuses to recognize union for tech workers
Labor unrest appears to be growing at the New York Times.
The News Guild of New York on Friday blasted the Gray Lady for failing to grant voluntary recognition to the hundreds of tech workers who have turned in pledge cards saying they wished to be represented by the union.
Without voluntary recognition, the vote will now need to be supervised by the National Labor Relations Board, dragging out the process.
A majority of the company’s the 650 tech workers turned in cards saying they wanted to be represented by the union, the Guild said on April 13.
“This a deeply disappointing decision and hypocritical given the Times voluntarily recognized our colleagues in the Wirecutter Union in 2019,” the Times Tech Guild said Friday.
CEO of the New York Times Meredith Kopit Levien revealed the decision in a memo to staffers, saying: “We have heard questions and concerns from many of our colleagues about what this would mean for their careers. As a result, this morning we advised the NewsGuild that we believe the right next step is a democratic process that surfaces all the facts, answers questions from employees and managers and then lets employees decide via an election.”
The Times Tech Guild is made up of software engineers, data analysts and web designers and product managers. It is separate from the nearly 1,400 journalists and business side staffers who are attempting to negotiate a new union contract with the company following the expiration of the previous contract on March 31.
The company and Guild representatives on that contract huddled again on Wednesday.
As The Post has reported, the company is resisting the union’s call for gender-neutral Ally McBeal-style bathrooms on each floor. It has also balked at a plan to retroactively revise bylines of transgender writers who have changed their names, but has agreed to honor the new names going forward.
The company also pushed back a plan for formalize its diversity push by requiring that at least 50 percent of new job candidates come from underrepresented groups.
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