Tech staffers at New York Times Co. NYT 0.70% have voted to unionize, creating the largest union of tech workers with bargaining rights in the country, the NewsGuild of New York said Thursday.
The group of roughly 600 employees includes software engineers, data analysts, project managers, product managers and designers.
“With this election result, the hundreds of us who work on New York Times websites and apps will finally have a real seat at the table and a meaningful say in our pay, benefits and working conditions,” the Times Tech Guild Organizing Committee said.
The Times’s tech workers will be represented by NewsGuild of New York, which already represented more than 1,300 Times journalists and non-newsroom staffers. The NewsGuild also represents employees of other major news organizations, including The Wall Street Journal.
Times management resisted the move by tech workers to organize and declined to voluntarily recognize the new union. The company had argued that a tech union would be an unproven experiment that would compromise collaboration and experimentation.
Ultimately, an election was held by the National Labor Relations Board.
“We continue to believe this election process was critical so our colleagues could learn more about the union, hear both sides of the argument and, ultimately, make an informed decision,” said Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for the New York Times. “Now that our colleagues have made their voices heard through a formal election, we look forward to working cooperatively with the Guild to negotiate in good faith, establishing a contract for the new unit and continuing to support our talented technology and digital staff.”
Times tech workers who supported the unionization effort said they wanted more salary transparency and accountability over diversity, equity and inclusion.
The conflict with tech workers highlights technology’s growing importance in newsrooms as publishers experiment with new digital products. At the Times, experimentation with products such as games, a cooking app and product recommendations has fueled growth.
Labor-organizing efforts across U.S. media have increased in the past few years, and other publishers have faced similar pressures. Last year, workers at Condé Nast publications the New Yorker, Pitchfork and Ars Technica reached their first contracts with the company. averting a strike after 2½ years of negotiations.
Write to Alexandra Bruell at [email protected]
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Appeared in the March 4, 2022, print edition as ‘New York Times Tech Staffers Vote to Unionize.’
