Leadership of the New York Times Guild backs Tech Guild’s strike authorization

NEW YORK – The leaders of The NY Times Guild have passed a resolution of support for the Times Tech Guild’s plans to go on strike. 

Members of the Times Guild unit council sent a copy of the resolution to A.G. Sulzberger, publisher; Meredith Kopit Levien, CEO; Joseph Kahn, executive editor; Jason Sobel, chief technology officer; and Hannah Yang, chief growth and customer officer.

"We care deeply about the work of The New York Times and do not want to see any disruption to that work, particularly during a crucial election season. But management has failed to make many substantive counterproposals and is refusing to schedule sufficient bargaining time to reach a reasonable deal."  the resolution of support said.

The Times Tech Guild – the union that includes software engineers, product managers, data analysts, project managers and designers at the New York Times – voted to authorize a strike on Sept. 10.

The timing of the Times Tech strike authorization vote was no accident. Nearly half of the union’s 600 members work directly on election-critical programs and projects. 

The Tech Guild, which won its union election by a landslide in March 2022, is negotiating its first contract. Times management has been dragging their feet in bargaining and attacking the Tech Guild every step of the way since workers first announced their intention to be a union in 2021. 

Most recently, for the month of September, Times management only offered a total of six hours of bargaining. When they came to bargaining, they finally presented a response to the Tech Guild’s wage proposal, offering an unacceptable 1% general wage increase.

“The best way to avoid a disruption to our work is for management to offer a fair contract as quickly as possible,” the Times Guild unit council resolution says.