[HN Gopher] New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize...
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New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike
Author : ericnkatz
Score : 189 points
Date : 2024-09-10 18:30 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| gamepsys wrote:
| This could be a blueprint for how other tech departments
| unionize, but I suspect NYT is a unique case because of their
| politics. Can such a left wing cornerstone really afford to look
| anti-union inside their own house? This gives the workers more
| leverage than they would otherwise have in other companies.
|
| In any of the places I worked at in the past an anti-union
| consulting firm would have been called in to bust things up
| before it ever got this far.
| neaden wrote:
| "Can such a left wing cornerstone really afford to look anti-
| union inside their own house?" - The NYTimes isn't left wing
| and being anti-union is entirely within their wheelhouse. Now
| they won't come out and say "We don't like unions" all their
| issues will of course be why this specific union isn't a good
| idea at this specific time, but they'd never willingly accept a
| union unless they really don't think they have a choice.
| nickff wrote:
| Perhaps the NYT isn't left-wing in a global context, and it
| is likely centrist in New York City, but it is definitely to
| the left of the median US voter. They're probably anti-union
| in this case because they're on tenuous financial footing,
| and unions in New York have a history of squeezing their
| employers out of business.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NYT/new-york-
| times...
| uoaei wrote:
| Public opinion has little bearing on the decisions that NYT
| makes, until a critical threshold is passed. The aim of the
| union is to bring that critical threshold of displeasure
| into focus and to approach it until NYT relents.
|
| The politics of the median voter in the US is not relevant
| for this discussion.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The NYT isn't left-wing in any context, other than one a
| segment of the US inherited from Glenn Beck some time in
| the 90s. It is an establishment paper, and energetically
| capitalist and interventionist.
|
| > They're probably anti-union in this case because they're
| on tenuous financial footing
|
| Why does your link say that their profit is up 60%(!) since
| 2020?
|
| -----
|
| edit: tbh, I think people think the NYT is left-wing only
| because they associate NYC with Jewish people, and they're
| still steeped in conspiracy theories of "Judeobolshevism."
| So I guess that's on the Dreyfus affair (through Ezra
| Pound, Eustace Mullins and the Birchers.)
|
| The NYT is a paper owned by a rich family that has always
| praised every dictator the CIA has praised, and passed on
| any lie they were asked to.
| nickff wrote:
| They've suffered a massive contraction in revenue and
| already had to cut back hugely; you're ignoring that, and
| focusing on the bounce-back.
| pessimizer wrote:
| So what you're saying is that the NYT was doing badly,
| then had a massive bounce-back. I am supposed to ignore
| the bounce-back, and accept the contraction that ended at
| least a half decade ago as an explanation for what is
| happening today. Why would I do this?
| Hasu wrote:
| > Perhaps the NYT isn't left-wing in a global context, and
| it is likely centrist in New York City, but it is
| definitely to the left of the median US voter.
|
| That isn't true at all. You're probably thinking of the NYT
| 20 years ago, under the Bush administration. Do you read
| the newspaper, or are you parroting talking points? I used
| to subscribe until the blatantly conservative bias became
| overwhelming.
|
| > They're probably anti-union in this case because they're
| on tenuous financial footing
|
| Didn't they just report a 13.3% increase in YoY profits on
| their most recent financial quarter? Your chart shows a
| company with healthy growth for several years running. A
| billion dollars in profit last year and on track to do it
| again this year isn't "tenuous".
| nickff wrote:
| According to this source, NYT Opinion is "Left", and NYT
| News is "Lean Left", and I think their ratings seem
| relatively well-calibrated:
| https://www.allsides.com/blog/see-our-updated-bias-
| rating-ab...
|
| You can't just look at results over the last four years
| when you're analyzing a newspaper that's 172 years old.
| They've had massive declines in recent years, which
| caused huge cutbacks. I think it's reasonable for them to
| try to preserve their options to cut costs in the future.
| Hasu wrote:
| Their methodology is literally, "We didn't like the
| results we got so we assumed they were wrong and ignored
| them."
|
| > Surprisingly, ABC News was rated Lean Right (1.18) in
| the July 2024 Blind Bias Survey. A total of 478
| respondents rated ABC. This rating differed from
| AllSides' current rating of Lean Left (-2.40) at the
| time, and triggered the Aug. 2024 Editorial Review.
|
| > AllSides speculates this outlier response is because
| the survey content was collected on July 15 and 18, 2024,
| which were just days after the July 14 assassination
| attempt of Donald Trump.
|
| > The Lean Right rating was incorporated into the final
| rating for ABC News, but was weighted less to account for
| outlier conditions.
|
| This is literally just putting your foot on the numbers
| to make it show what you want - the network showed more
| right-leaning content and they said, "Well that doesn't
| count." Why doesn't it count?
|
| Look at the increasing number of criticisms of Times
| coverage from the Left. Look at their trajectory since
| the Cotton editorial. Look at how they're covering this
| election. It's not a left wing paper, under A.G.
| Sulzberger.
|
| > You can't just look at results over the last four years
| when you're analyzing a newspaper that's 172 years old.
| They've had massive declines in recent years, which
| caused huge cutbacks. I think it's reasonable for them to
| try to preserve their options to cut costs in the future.
|
| They had massive declines from the mid-oughts to 2018 in
| line with the rest of the newspaper industry. They've
| reinvented themselves as a tech media company and are on
| a better track now, so it makes sense that the employees
| who made that happen want the same union protections as
| the rest of the employees of the newspaper!
|
| They also were never doing so badly that they weren't
| still making millions of dollars in profit, which I'm not
| willing to call "tenuous" for a newspaper that's 172
| years old.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| It's wild how few people in this thread are unaware of
| the massive blowback the NYT has faced from the left, but
| I guess most people are generally not in sync with the
| left to begin with :P
|
| Really telling that the NYT's attempt to please everyone
| has pleased almost no one, though. Progressives are angry
| that hate groups get airtime in the name of
| "objectivity". Conservatives still think it's a left-wing
| paper and won't read it. Liberal centrists are playing
| Wordle?
| mandmandam wrote:
| > it is definitely to the left of the median US voter.
|
| No, it isn't, and it's not remotely close.
|
| The median US voter is far more left wing than you would
| know from politics and media. Most voters actually support
| an arms embargo vs Israel, support universal healthcare,
| support action on climate change, want an end to the prison
| industrial complex, want minimum wage increases, gun
| control, an end to predatory college costs and loans,
| stronger worker's rights, reproductive rights, cannabis
| legalization, reduction in militarism, affordable housing,
| etc.
|
| The NYT is _central_ to fooling these "median voters" into
| supporting politicians and parties that have _absolutely no
| intention_ of supporting genuine left wing action.
|
| To say the NYT supports unions in general is to ignore very
| recent history, such as their coverage of Amazon and
| Starbucks union efforts. You also need to ignore a very
| very long and well described slant against left wing causes
| in general. Here, have a nice digestible Chomsky piece from
| nearly 30 years ago: https://chomsky.info/199710__/
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| See also: the NYT's coverage of trans issues, which in
| recent years has tried to both-sides the topic in a way
| that gives fundamentalist hate groups equal oxygen as the
| fucking APA. No self-respecting leftist publication is
| handing the mic to Mumsnet users and conversion therapy
| advocates. (Contrast that to the New Yorker, which is
| hardly a commie rag and yet has been unambiguously
| progressive on that front, among others.)
|
| An apt quote from Pynchon's _Bleeding Edge_ , which was
| published in 2013 but set in 2001:
|
| > How right-wing, Maxine wonders, does a person have to
| be to think of the New York Times as a left-wing
| newspaper?
| fiiibilk wrote:
| Mumsnet isn't a "fundamentalist hate group", it's a
| website and forum for parents. It has a feminism board
| where most users are gender critical and, unsurprisingly,
| prioritise women's needs above male interests.
| hollerith wrote:
| And the main problem with Stalin was that he wasn't
| leftist enough, eh?
| mandmandam wrote:
| Thank you for exemplifying my point.
|
| There's _nothing_ particularly radical about wanting more
| fair healthcare, labor rights, education, housing etc.
|
| As I pointed out, the _majority_ of Americans want those
| things. It 's pretty basic human decency, empathy,
| efficiency, etc.
|
| And yet, when you raise these _majority_ viewpoints,
| someone pops up from behind a Bush to call you
| 'tankie'/'commie'/'literally Stalin'. That's not an
| accident. There are some people who like things the way
| thay are, and about 6 of those people own 90% of all
| media.
|
| We spent over 8 trillion dollars (!) in the Middle East,
| murdering millions, all based on lies; and now our
| Democrat candidate is overjoyed to get endorsements from
| the architects of those wars... At _every_ stage, from
| plotting to image rehabilitation, from Afghanistan to
| Iraq to Syria to Lebanon to Yemen, etc, to Gaza, the NYT
| was with those warmongers all the way.
|
| They're not left. Never were.
| seneca wrote:
| > The NYTimes isn't left wing
|
| Allsides media bias rating for NYT is lean left[1], a -2.2
| with -6 as the most extreme and 0 as neutral. Rating is left
| for their opinion section[2], a -4.
|
| 1. https://www.allsides.com/news-source/new-york-times
|
| 2. https://www.allsides.com/news-source/new-york-times-
| opinion-...
| TylerE wrote:
| From that page:
|
| Editorial Review: Sep 2018
|
| The NYT's slant has shifted post 2020.
| norir wrote:
| I don't fully agree with how neutral is defined. The US has
| always been a right leaning country for better and worse. I
| might be able to agree with Allsides on a relative scale
| but I think all corporate media has a right leaning bias
| relative to what one would expect from non-profit media.
| Since very few people regularly consume non-profit media,
| it is not surprising to me that the NYTimes appears on the
| left even though I do not agree that it is on an absolute
| scale.
| mc32 wrote:
| The NYT has been liberal since I can remember; however, up
| until relatively recent decades, it was respected by
| conservatives as well as liberals. Now it reflects liberal
| and progressive povs.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I've always thought of NYT as pretty liberal too. Not
| leftist, those are two totally different philosophies. In
| the case of union organizing, they might be vaguely on the
| same side, but only after jumping through a couple hoops.
|
| I think leftists are basically in favor of unions in the US
| because leftists are generally in favor of labor
| protections, and unions are the best we can get inside the
| capitalist system. More extreme leftists might prefer some
| kind of socialist system, but that's not on the table in
| America really.
|
| Liberals are, of course, typically market oriented (that's
| what liberal economics are). A liberal point of view would
| be "of course people have a basic right to associate with
| people of their choosing, negotiate contracts, and a union
| is just a vehicle for doing that."
|
| A union is about as much collectivism as a liberal can
| stomach, more of a stop-gap for a leftist.
| klyrs wrote:
| On the other hand I have recently seen George W. Bush being
| described as a _progressive_ because he wouldn 't say who
| he's voting for. Left/right determination seems to be made
| purely on loyalty to a single individual in today's US
| politics. So if that's where we're at, NYT is liberal
| because it won't endorse Trump. That's fine, but let's just
| say that.
|
| In the world outside of petty dictatorships, though,
| left/right determination is made on the basis of alignment
| with various policies and philosophies -- so increasingly,
| people within the US are losing credibility when it comes
| to any conversation about left/right politics.
| mc32 wrote:
| The neocon thing is weird. Bernie and others used to
| compare Cheney with pretty unsavory characters in
| history, but now he's lauded by progressives. This shit
| is getting weird. Some weird realignment is happening
| where former enemies are bedfellows now with a new enemy.
| In very loose terms, Republicans are subverting previous
| Democratic issues and the Democrats are subverting
| previous neocon issues. The Dems now get most of "big
| money", new Republicans are now the populists. Broad
| strokes of course, but that's how it's shaping up.
|
| If anyone remembers, in the eighties the Repubs were into
| importing foreign labor (i.e. cheap; hence "no uvas") and
| Bernie used to protest against dumping refugees in his
| state. This has reversed!
| klyrs wrote:
| I haven't seen Cheney being lauded for anything other
| than maintaining his stand against somebody he has been
| calling a criminal, coward, and worse for years. I
| haven't seen a single democrat show excitement over
| policies supported by Cheney, except when he says that
| the law should apply to Trump as well as the rest of us.
| So, again, what you're calling weird is largely a result
| of loyalty to a person instead of actual policies.
|
| And, yes, the world remembers Bernie's about-face on
| policy -- there's been quite a lot (e.g., [1]) written on
| the topic. But it's pretty normal for politicians and
| even political parties to change their minds in issues
| over a span of time as long as Bernie's career. This
| should be _expected_ of politicians: they _should_ be
| willing to change their minds and adapt their policies to
| new facts gained over time. Moreover, they exist to
| represent We The People, so when we change _our_
| collective minds, politicians who fail to keep up are
| replaced! Bernie is still around despite his change of
| heart precisely because it followed that of his
| constituency.
|
| Do you remember when Theodore Roosevelt ran on the
| Progressive Party ticket? That party, founded by a
| lesbian, was eventually folded back into the mainstream
| Republican party back when Democrats were conservatives.
| There's nothing weird about parties and politicians
| changing their minds on stuff.
|
| [1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
| politics/2020/2/25/21143931/b...
| mc32 wrote:
| Well, for one Kamala herself said she was proud to be
| endorsed by Dick.
| Clubber wrote:
| Politics makes strange bedfellows.
|
| >Cheney with pretty unsavory characters in history, but
| now he's lauded by progressives. This shit is getting
| weird.
|
| We've always been at war with Eurasia.
|
| Ok I'm done with the cliches.
| smaudet wrote:
| > an anti-union consulting firm
|
| Hmm. Maybe an anti-anti-union consulting firm is a business
| opportunity?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Who would be purchasing its services?
|
| The only obvious customer would be a union, and they already
| provide that service themselves.
| diggan wrote:
| Or, we can use what worked in the past without involving for-
| profit enterprises: grassroots movements
|
| Easier to align people when you remove the whole troublesome
| "money" part. Question is how to motivate Americans to work
| together if not for money?
| bee_rider wrote:
| Unions sometimes hire on third party organizations to help
| them organize, I don't think they are specifically
| specialized against anti-union consulting firms, but I bet
| that's part of it.
| dopylitty wrote:
| NYT is a pretty solidly right wing organization (eg [1] and
| [2]) like most for profit media outfits in the US. I suspect
| they'll react like any other for profit business. Previous
| leaks have shown this to be the case [0][3]
|
| 0:https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/feb/01/leaked-
| message...
|
| 1: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/news-brief-boudin-
| recall-...
|
| 2:https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/news-brief-the-battle-
| ove...
|
| 3:https://actionnetwork.org/letters/new-york-times-stop-
| union-...
| hungie wrote:
| The NYT is not a left wing organization. It aligns, mostly,
| with a centrist Democrat politically. That position puts it
| pretty center right on the global scale.
|
| A left wing paper would typically be pretty anti capitalist,
| anti imperial, etc. which the NYT is definitely not.
|
| This is a global forum, it's important to remember that while
| the democrats in the US are called "the left" there, they
| really _really_ are not a left wing party.
| adw wrote:
| "Center right" is if anything underselling it. The NYT is to
| the right of, for example, the Financial Times.
| hungie wrote:
| And yet, downvotes. I feel like it's pretty objective that
| NYT isn't leftist in any meaningful way.
| mint2 wrote:
| Regardless of what infographic makers declare, the NYT newsroom
| is not "left" leaning.
|
| Their coverage is much more complicated than left vs right, but
| one theme is they don't question the loudest narratives, and
| they hold grudges when they perceive someone to not give them
| enough access.
|
| The right tends to be louder and more uniform and persistent in
| messaging, so that coloring often gets unconsciously added to
| articles rather than the journalists taking a step back and
| analyzing the whole picture.
|
| It's the quick/lazy way to write stories after all, and
| journalists have deadlines. The author may be left leaning and
| some of that may even show, but a little left leaning flavor
| doesn't mask that it's based on the right's take.
|
| The choice of coverage also is very herd like, not left or
| right.
|
| The NYT also goes out of the way to appear fair and balanced,
| trying to find the "average" in stories. But as anyone but the
| NYT knows, averages are skewed easily.
| segasaturn wrote:
| It's not left vs. right, it's establishment vs. anti-
| establishment. New York Times was a major cheerleader for the
| illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and uncritically repeated
| falsehoods from George W. Bush, who is not exactly a leftist
| hero.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| It also was unquestioningly supportive of any and all covid
| NPI's. NYT was one of the major publications that would
| routinely report the "covid kill rate" at like 4% despite
| massive data suggesting it was at least one or two orders
| of magnitude off depending on the age bracket.
| thegrim33 wrote:
| Well here's a challenge for you, we can easily put your
| viewpoint to the test:
|
| Go on the NYT website right now and find me a single article
| currently on the front page that's negative about leftist
| policies or politicians, or a single article that's positive
| about rightist policies or politicians.
|
| I bet you can't find any.
|
| Repeat this experiment, any minute, any hour, any day, any
| year, for the last 10 years, and you will get the same exact
| results.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Just a quick look, here's one that plays into the
| mainstream narrative that Hamas is hiding out in hospitals
| and schools and therefore it's understandable to bomb them:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/world/middleeast/airstri
| k...
| ImJamal wrote:
| Was that on the front page? I just checked and couldn't
| find it there.
| consteval wrote:
| Does that make a difference or are y'all just constantly
| moving goalposts to fuel the narrative that media is
| inherently left-leaning?
|
| Because it's really not - especially not in the US. Go
| look through their articles. How many serve corporate
| interests? How many are fundamentally ultra-capitalists?
|
| You guys act like these are commies. No, they're right-
| leaning, just not far right insane wackos (Fox News).
| You're right, they're not out here questioning how black
| Kamala is. No, that absolutely does not make them left
| wing.
| relaxing wrote:
| Ross Douthat is still employed so your assertion falls flat
| on its face.
|
| Aside from that, right now I see an item claiming Harris
| has flip-flopped on progressive policies.
| DinoDad13 wrote:
| Any reasonably fair news coverage is considered left wing
| now-a-days.
| matrix87 wrote:
| They're about as left wing as hillary clinton. only when it's
| convenient for them
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Left wing?
|
| The NYT is corporate wing. There's no charitable way to look at
| their reporting on the current election cycle and make the
| claim that they've treated the candidates equally. Donald Trump
| hasn't uttered a consecutive set of coherent sentences where he
| starts with an idea and finishes with an actual conclusion that
| isn't "and it'll be better / worse than ever before" in at
| least 5 years.
| keybored wrote:
| The NYT is as Left Wing as the journalistic profession is Ant-
| Establishment: Not in the slightest but they themselves
| constantly claim to be.
| delichon wrote:
| How does one refrain from crossing the virtual picket line of
| such a strike? Is it to not do business with any company with
| this union's workers, for the duration?
| pessimizer wrote:
| > not do business with any company with this union's workers,
| for the duration? Anyone got a list?
|
| 1. The New York Times
| AllegedAlec wrote:
| Honestly this seems like good advice regardless of strikes.
| tptacek wrote:
| Continuing to do business with a company whose employees are
| striking isn't "crossing the picket line". Crossing the picket
| line means undermining a strike directly by supply labor when
| organized labor is using a labor embargo as leverage. To avoid
| crossing the NYT picket line, don't write for the NYT.
| paxys wrote:
| Yup in most cases striking employees don't want the end
| consumer to boycott the company, because ultimately it hurts
| them as well. Picketing is done to (1) raise awareness and
| (2) discourage non-union/temporary labor from replacing them
| during the strike.
| wpietri wrote:
| I think at least these days, usage of the term can include
| customers. For example, this from the University of Maine's
| Bureau of Labor Education: "Customers may refuse to cross a
| picket line and picketers have the right to ask customers to
| honor their picket but should not intimidate, block customer
| access, disparage a company's product, or say anything that
| is untrue or casts the product in a false or misleading
| light."
|
| Or this, from the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee:
| "Lastly, customers also have the right to honor the picket
| line and arguably have the most important role in influencing
| employers' decisions, outside of the workers themselves."
|
| Or this, from NYT writer: "Having walked a picket line
| before, I try not to cross anyone else's. The W and its
| parent company, Marriott, know there are lots of people like
| me. So why hadn't they disclosed in advance what would greet
| me upon arrival?"
|
| [1] https://umaine.edu/ble/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/181/2014/11/...
|
| [2] https://workerorganizing.org/how-to-honor-the-picket-
| line-an...
|
| [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/01/your-money/should-
| hotels-...
| tptacek wrote:
| Not transacting with a business in solidarity with an
| ongoing strike is a boycott. People can boycott the NYT in
| support of the strike. But crossing a picket line is a
| much, much bigger deal than not participating in a boycott.
| If you skip the NYT Mini Crossword for a week to support
| the strikers, I respect that, but I'm going to keep pushing
| for that sweet 15s finish this week and I'm going to sleep
| fine doing it.
| wpietri wrote:
| I agree that a boycott is different, and for the NYT the
| terms are pretty distinct. But when employees are
| picketing a retail business, the two are much more
| entangled, so I think the common use of the phrase has
| shifted away from the precision you're expecting it to
| have.
| danaris wrote:
| ...To our detriment.
|
| In many cases (though not all!), when workers are
| striking against a retail business, they _want_ the
| customers to keep coming. Showing the strain that gets
| put on the system in such cases can be part of the
| leverage the union exerts.
|
| This is why we, on the outside, need to listen to what
| the union is asking of us, and not just loudly announce
| that we are boycotting in solidarity, or "refusing to
| cross the picket line", if that's the opposite of what
| they want.
| tptacek wrote:
| Or don't! It's fine to be pro-labor but for your
| interests not to intersect with every strike. One might
| have a different opinion about the moral weight of an NYT
| strike versus that of the Marriott hotel housekeeping
| staff, for instance. You might personally find yourself
| morally aligned with every strike, and in that case you
| should pay attention to what the strikers are asking. Or
| you might not. Things are complicated!
|
| Either way: it is not in fact a given that customers are
| obliged by solidarity to boycott businesses dealing with
| strikes.
| Cushman wrote:
| It's not a shift in usage, it's a term of art.
| _Informally_ it could mean just crossing the line to
| enter the business, but unless you live in a turn-of-the-
| century company town, no one in the union is expecting
| anything related to that by default.
|
| In _labor_ , "respecting the picket line" is a moral
| action for _union members_ (or scabs) which by definition
| couldn't apply to a spontaneous self-directed consumer
| boycott.
|
| Not to put to fine a point on it: if you show up to
| someone else's labor action claiming solidarity, and then
| independently decide to pivot the action to a totally
| different set of economic incentives, you are -- almost
| literally! -- a scab.
| tptacek wrote:
| A scab is someone who works in violation of a strike.
| It's not a generic term for anybody disfavored by labor
| activists.
| Cushman wrote:
| Ouch! Fair cop since we're nitpicking, but I was trying
| to be cute about that -- the joke started out more like
| "you're technically crossing the line to scab as a
| strikebreaker". I'm aware that it still doesn't make
| sense unless there's a sympathy action by the
| strikebreakers' union, unfunny and unhelpful in the first
| place, thanks for the correction :)
|
| Edit: Ah shoot not again. What I _meant_ to say was
| "scabbing as an agent provocateur". Sorry, I'll quit
| while I'm ahead!
| paperplatter wrote:
| It's not even a shift, it's the original meaning. There
| are/were physical picket lines that you would literally
| cross to enter a business.
| tedunangst wrote:
| And customers weren't crossing them because nobody buys a
| car by walking to the Ford factory.
| paperplatter wrote:
| There's no need to justify how you do business with the
| NYT, whether it's playing a crossword game or accepting a
| job. But either one is referred to as crossing the picket
| line.
| simonw wrote:
| Surely playing a crossword game is only "crossing the
| picket line" if the workers on strike have asked you not
| to play that crossword / called for a more general
| boycott?
| tptacek wrote:
| I think there's a deeper and more important subtlety
| here: there's a sort of moral obligation not to break a
| strike, but except in some specific circumstances, there
| really isn't an obligation to support a boycott, any more
| than there's an obligation to put a pro-labor bumper
| sticker on your car. Breaking a streak and ignoring a
| boycott are not equally weighted.
|
| (My kid brother is a labor person, so really I'm just
| venting some stuff here to keep it from coming up at
| Thanksgiving).
| mandmandam wrote:
| > "a labor person"
|
| ... Are we supposed to know what that means?
|
| The way you're using it, it sounds like a pejorative...
| Which puts something of a spin on your particular
| pedantry here.
|
| > there really isn't an obligation to support a boycott
|
| I think the Irish - who invented the term - would
| disagree with you on that point.
|
| Not every boycott is worth supporting, sure. But if a
| boycott _is_ worth supporting (say, divesting from
| genocide supporters) then yes there 's a bit of an
| obligation there.
| tptacek wrote:
| No, it isn't. You can see why people online would want it
| to be! But boycotts and strikes are different things.
| noobermin wrote:
| My honest opinion, asking customers not to do business
| doesn't really make sense as customer demand can add to the
| pressure on management when their workers are not to be
| found and all they have are temps who are, actually,
| crossing the picket line. I never understood this stance.
| It sounds much more like a morality stance than one based
| on strategy to get management to the table.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Sometimes unions will call for a consumer boycott during a
| strike, but sometimes they won't. Unsure what the NYT tech
| union is asking for (or not asking for) at the moment.
|
| And I can see why it can make sense to _not_ call for a
| boycott. If workers are on strike, but consumer demand remains
| strong and their needs aren 't being met, it puts pressure on
| management. Like if mail drivers go on strike, everyone stops
| getting deliveries, and suddenly it's obvious how critical
| those drivers are.
| hungie wrote:
| I don't know why you are being down voted, this is a fair
| question.
|
| The answer is: don't make assumptions, listen to what the
| workers want. If they call for a boycott, boycott in support.
| If they say, "don't boycott", please don't encourage others to
| boycott.
|
| Plenty in the media industry make money from engagement, and
| they might not want you to stop engaging! The writers strike,
| for instance, said keep watching but consider not producing
| content that builds off our content. Plenty of podcasts
| switched to other media for the duration.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| They're not actually on strike yet, and they haven't requested
| any action from customers. Sometimes a union actually wants
| customers to behave as normal, because typical customer
| behavior in concert with a work stoppage will apply the most
| pressure to management. Sometimes they ask customers to
| boycott, to apply financial pressure. Sometimes, though rarely,
| a union will ask customers to threaten to divest or cancel
| accounts.
|
| The best way to make sure you're in step with what the union is
| asking for from customers is to keep an eye on whatever they
| seem to be using to communicate the most - in this case, it
| seems to be their twitter: https://x.com/NYTGuildTech. I think
| it's fair to assume that if they have any requests for
| customers of NYT, they'll put them there.
| jamamp wrote:
| I remember during the screenwriters guild strikes in the Movie
| and TV industry, many writers were advocating _not_ to boycott
| movies/TV. Mainly in order to show that the people still wanted
| to watch the media that these people were writing for and
| creating, so that the strike held more legitimacy: we are
| needed to produce more content for your business.
|
| I suppose sometimes it makes sense to boycott, but not all the
| time.
| mattdotc wrote:
| Watch for public statements from the union. A striking unit
| will generally inform the general public if they are looking
| for any show of support. No need to assume that a boycott is
| desired!
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Actual announcement/source:
| https://x.com/NYTGuildTech/status/1833568353379905562
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| News release here: https://www.nyguild.org/post/new-york-times-
| tech-guild-votes...
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| This is a great time for it, with the election on and the
| millions running into the pocket of mass media.
|
| NYT should be highly motivated to negotiate a deal as soon as
| possible.
| strict9 wrote:
| Absolutely. This is the worst job market for tech workers in
| probably 20 years. Many employed in tech are hoping to keep
| their job, let alone bargain for higher wages and remote work.
|
| Hard to imagine this effort having as much leverage if it were
| to happen after the election.
| paxys wrote:
| In fact I'd wager that one of the reasons for the urgency on
| the workers' part is to lock up contracts before the election
| in order to prevent mass layoffs right after.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > urgency on the workers' part is to lock up contracts
| before the election in order to prevent mass layoffs right
| after.
|
| If workers fear mass layoffs, going on strike is a bad
| idea. Instead, in such a situation the union should attempt
| to make an agreement with the employer of the kind "no
| salary increase (as it would be appropriate in
| consideration of the inflation), but job security for the
| next years".
| brianwawok wrote:
| Which is a great way to have a company full of people who
| can't be fired with no motivation, harming the parent
| organization
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| This is trade-off that a company (and thee employee, too)
| has to make:
|
| - does the company want to be able to easily get rid of
| "undesired"/"lazy" employees? For this option, it will
| likely have to pay bigger salaries.
|
| - on the other hand, for the option to have job security,
| an employee will have to accept that the expected salary
| is lower, i.e. the company can save money on salaries,
| but cannot easily fire the employee.
|
| Both are economically sensible solutions.
| paxys wrote:
| > the union should attempt to make an agreement
|
| They are literally striking because the company is
| refusing to negotiate with them.
| notfried wrote:
| I don't mean to be disparaging to these employees, but why does
| NYT need 600 tech workers (assuming these are engineers,
| designers, PMs and analysts)?
| ipsum2 wrote:
| NYTimes games section is more popular than its articles.
| They're basically a mobile game company that happens to have a
| news division.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| Not to mention they probably have plenty working on internal
| tooling/data analysis that assists their reporting.
|
| I think people are underestimating how much tech it could
| take to run a company like the NYTimes.
| fullstop wrote:
| Guilty. I've done the daily crossword for the last 445 days.
| hungie wrote:
| Maintaining the site, embedding rich media content in the site,
| managing dynamic elements including apis, ads, etc, managing
| the cms software, managing payments, building customer service
| infrastructure, internal tools for developing and launching,
| security personnel, all the games, tracking engagement and
| reporting business metrics, building software to manage the
| physical processes printing and distribution of a massive
| periodical, managing suppliers, managing access for authors,
| editors, guest writers, site commenters, and social media
| workers, managing internationalization and accessibility... and
| probably a million things I'm forgetting.
|
| The complexity of a massive org like the NYT is significantly
| non trivial.
| mbrumlow wrote:
| > The complexity of a massive org like the NYT is
| significantly non trivial.
|
| I think that is the point. At face value what they produce,
| simply should not be that complex. It seems it's complex for
| the sake of being a big complex organization. And unions will
| only solidify that into stone to prevent any sort of
| optimization that would bring the complexity down.
| hungie wrote:
| Did you read the list of things I posted they have to do to
| ship their product? It's non trivial because those are hard
| problems and their space is large. It should be that
| complex because it is that complex.
| mbrumlow wrote:
| No. I did not read your comment until now. Not sure how I
| replied to it.
|
| But anyways much of what you are listing is just more
| stuff that sounds complex or is not needed. It exist
| because there was money and it was a big bloated
| organization. It's not needed to run the core business
| and frankly the cost of those things are still small. The
| number of users don't change their engineering cost, or
| at least should not.
|
| The promise of software is exactly the return on
| investment is not affected by the number of people who
| use it.
|
| Also. You got me at dynamic content, that is the job of
| the software, not a human. If they have yet to provide
| user friendly interfaces down their editors to manipulate
| the content on their site without the need to interface
| with an engineer then they have already failed.
|
| I know this sounds like a rant, and maybe it is. But I am
| tried of poorly ran companies justifying outrageous team
| sizes because they simply ignore any good design with
| their software and how to organize a company to be lean
| agile and successful.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| So is what you're arguing really that because its complex
| it shouldn't be done? So Netflix should never have been
| developed, because it wasn't needed and is very complex
| to run. You could already get videos at your local video
| store anyway.
|
| And how are you deciding what is or is not needed. You're
| basically saying the company should never innovate or try
| anything new outside of their existing core business, and
| should minimize their chances for monetization in new
| verticals which basically no corporation would ever do.
| They're always looking for other sources of monetization
| since thats what investors want.
| mbrumlow wrote:
| No. I am arguing it's complex because of bad design
| decisions both in the software and business organization.
|
| Everything they do today could be done with under 100
| engineers, maybe less.
| kennywinker wrote:
| > And unions will only solidify that into stone to prevent
| any sort of optimization that would bring the complexity
| down.
|
| It looks like you've bought into some anti-union talking
| points. Efficiency is sometimes good. But sometimes it's
| just a way of shifting profit from workers to capital. As
| an example: if I replace 100 workers managing a server farm
| with an AWS account - the money that would have paid 100
| humans to have nice lives instead goes to a much smaller
| number of amazon workers, amazon shareholders, and whatever
| "savings" my company realizes goes to me the owner. So
| wealth concentrates in shareholders hands, and workers are
| laid off. Does that make the world better? Not really...
| more efficient, yes. More fragile and subject to one EMP or
| earthquake taking out trillions of dollars? Also yes.
| cjpearson wrote:
| > building customer service infrastructure
|
| The effort here is not to be underestimated. It took years
| for them to implement a cancel button.
| RobRivera wrote:
| What have you done to better understand the technical worker
| needs of the NYT?
| Djdjur7373bb wrote:
| Are you suggesting it's unreasonable to ask here without
| doing his own independent research? It seems like a
| reasonable thing to discuss here.
| RobRivera wrote:
| No I am not.
|
| Observation: answering the question you wished you were
| asked as opposed to the one you were asked is a
| conversation dominating tactic which reduces your
| credibility towards good-faith socratic dialogue.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| I'm not OP, but I'm also irritated by these kinds of
| questions, especially during discussions about labor
| disputes. This is a well-established recipe to muddy the
| waters for all posts touching on tech workers and labor
| unions (all 3 are present in the comments, here):
|
| - 'They make enough money, why do they need collective
| bargaining?'
|
| - 'Why does NYT need SO MANY tech workers? It's a newspaper
| after all, right?'
|
| - 'The job market is bad, so they should be THANKFUL to
| even have a job' OR 'They should just get a new job that
| pays better, the free market will fix it' - depending on
| how the job market looks.
| paxys wrote:
| NYT is among the top 50 most visited websites in the world and
| gets upwards of 700M visitors a year. They have apps on every
| platform. They have interactive content. They host videos and
| livestreams. They have games. They have a huge social media
| presence. They have an ads platform. They have the same overall
| technical challenges as any large tech company.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| > NYT is among the top 50 most visited websites in the world
|
| Not according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-
| visited_websites
|
| or https://www.similarweb.com/top-websites/
|
| or https://www.semrush.com/trending-websites/global/all
|
| > gets upwards of 700M visitors a year.
|
| archive.org the last one on Semrush list, gets 255.99M _a
| month_. At 59M a month, NYT is nowhere near the top 50.
|
| "LooLoo Kids" YouTube channel, making nursery rhymes and
| children's songs, based in Romania has more viewers and
| subscribers than NYT.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-
| subscribed_YouTub...
| adverbpraxis wrote:
| The person you're replying to isn't correct. Last month
| they got 536MM visits. Ranked 92 globally and 29 in the US
| according to similarweb
| tootie wrote:
| NYT is by far the biggest success story in digital news. They
| are still building their subscriber base by making themselves a
| full-on lifestyle brand. Aside from being the preeminent
| newspaper in probably the whole world, they are driving a ton
| of engagement with games, cooking, wirecutter and The Athletic.
| Not to mention how much they leverage visual and data-driven
| journalism. I'd also imagine they are a huge juicy target for
| hackers of all stripes with all the info they are sitting on
| and the people they piss off.
| malfist wrote:
| This type of comment shows up on every single post about unions
| or layoffs.
|
| The answer is always the same: It might take you and a friend a
| weekend to build a [insert company] clone, but by the time you
| need to support the level of customers as [insert company]
| it'll certainly need a lot more work.
| ImJamal wrote:
| How many of the support staff are in the union? The union is
| for the tech workers.
| consteval wrote:
| Right, to deliver their product over a tech channel to
| their many millions of customers. No, that's not easy. Yes,
| that's necessarily complex.
|
| You and your buddies can build a crossword or whatever the
| hell in a weekend. You can't deliver is to 100 million
| people tomorrow, while also maintaining one of the US'
| largest newpapers online.
| fragmede wrote:
| For a crossword, which shards pretty trivially, while
| already having a database team to deal with that side of
| things? Large orgs move slowly so there are many reasons
| why you couldn't write something over the weekend and
| deploy it that quickly, but the challenges at that level
| are bureaucratic, not technical.
| DanHulton wrote:
| I'm kind of surprised it's _only_ 600 tech workers. They're a
| _huge_ digital company.
| Clubber wrote:
| I would guess a good chunk of them are comment moderators.
| oconnore wrote:
| As I understand it, the earliest they could actually strike would
| be 80 days from today, as per the Taft-Hartley act, putting the
| strike on November 29 (after the election).
|
| Something seems broken when a group is paid relatively fair wages
| (https://www.levels.fyi/companies/the-new-york-times-
| company/...), works 35 hours a week before overtime, and is
| talking about going on a strike. I don't think that fits with the
| original purpose of unions.
| addicted wrote:
| > The guild, which was formed in 2022, has yet to secure a
| contract after more than two years of bargaining.
|
| This seems like a pretty reasonable reason to strike. Arguably
| it's the most justifiable reason to strike.
| oconnore wrote:
| What does this actually mean "secure a contract"? I don't
| think I have a contract, and the sky is not falling.
| Sivart13 wrote:
| The point of organizing a union is to negotiate a contract.
| One that includes terms that individual workers wouldn't
| have been able to secure on their own.
|
| A union that's recognized but doesn't have a contract may
| as well not be a union at all. Basically the only power
| they can exercise is to strike.
| gamepsys wrote:
| It means that even though there are members in the
| guild/union, the company NYT negotiates individually with
| every member of the guild/union instead of going through
| the guild/union.
|
| The entire worker benefit of the union is collective
| bargaining and NYT has rejected working with the unions.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| No, once you have union representation here, the company
| can not legally negotiate individually with members.
| That's an unfair labor practice!
|
| What actually happens is prevailing trends basically
| continue. Management can still hire people, etc. but must
| continue more or less as before unless they are willing
| to negotiate those specific changes.
| xvector wrote:
| Those wages are absolutely not fair in the era of modern tech
| comp. But IMHO people should just find a different job, there
| are plenty available that pay better.
| arunabha wrote:
| > But IMHO people should just find a different job, there are
| plenty available that pay better.
|
| Genuine question, why is that better? There are plenty of
| reasons why employees might be overall ok with the job and
| prefer to work out improvements in specific areas. The
| generally accepted implicit rationale of all of the
| accommodation needing to be done by the employees(including
| finding another job) is honestly puzzling. I'm wondering if
| that is the consequence of employers having vastly more power
| over employees(esp in the US, with healthcare being tied to
| employment)
|
| Should the default be a reasonable compromise between the two
| sides, vs the only recourse being employees leaving?
| bee_rider wrote:
| Or they could unionize and then not have to do a bunch of
| annoying interviews and possibly move.
| javagram wrote:
| NYT is the premier digital news outlet. Why should a principal
| SWE there get paid less than a senior SWE working on Google
| News, for instance?
|
| If NYT has the money it makes sense to me for the employees to
| ask for higher pay. What else is the original purpose of unions
| than to give workers power to bargain with the company?
| hyperpape wrote:
| > Why should a principal SWE there get paid less than a
| senior SWE working on Google News, for instance?
|
| https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-
| b-d&q=google+ma...
| cvwright wrote:
| I think the uncomfortable question for many here is, why
| should the SWE at Google get paid any more than the SWE at
| the NY Times?
| shagie wrote:
| > Why should a principal SWE there get paid less than a
| senior SWE working on Google News, for instance?
|
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28GOOGL%2C+NYT%29+reve.
| .. (GOOGL, NYT) revenue per employee
| Alphabet Class A Shares | $1.815 million (US dollars)
| New York Times Company | $422656.27 (US dollars)
| francisofascii wrote:
| I think the contention point is over remote work rights. I
| would gladly accept these salaries, but not if I have to
| commute into NYC almost every day.
| hungie wrote:
| Good for them. More workers need to be understanding just how
| much they are being exploited by their leadership and demand a
| more equitable piece of the pie.
| shagie wrote:
| What would be more equitable?
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=New+York+Times&assumpti...
| puts the revenue per employee at $422,656.
|
| They've got 5900 employees and
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/07/business/media/new-york-t...
| says a quarterly profit of $104.7 million. $400M / 5900 gives
| about $68,000 profit per employee.
|
| So, what's reasonable? Would giving everyone a $65k pay raise
| and zeroing out the profit for the company be correct? Would
| that put them close to what they'd get if they worked in big
| tech? (
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28Apple%2C+Meta%2C+GOO...
| ). We're dealing with very different numbers there.
| Clubber wrote:
| Union negotiation isn't always about money, though it is
| usually part of it. It's also about working conditions and
| benefits.
|
| Also you can get a raise without "costing" anything extra in
| the expense column, such as fewer working hours for the same
| pay/benefits.
| shagie wrote:
| There are potentially many reasonable things to negotiate
| for. So far, all the information I can find is "stalled
| contract negotiations". Working without a contract is a
| perfectly valid reason to strike.
|
| Things like making sure that AI isn't used in certain
| capacities to reduce the staff size wouldn't be
| unreasonable.
|
| As of yet, the contents of the negotiation aren't public -
| so we can only guess.
|
| In the meantime, the idea that everyone should be able to
| make Big Tech wages ignores the reality that most companies
| aren't Big Tech and have a revenue per employee that is a
| small fraction of it... and are running on much slimmer
| profit margins.
| hungie wrote:
| If you want the Union's opinion, their strike demands are the
| place to look.
|
| If you want my opinion, what you've described would be a
| start. Or at least the workers there should be parties to a
| decision on whether that's the right decision. I'd consider
| lowering executive compensation as well. But there's many
| ways to achieve a balance within an organization that
| benefits the product and the workers.
| shagie wrote:
| > If you want the Union's opinion, their strike demands are
| the place to look.
|
| https://www.axios.com/2024/09/10/nyt-tech-union-strike-vote
|
| > The New York Times Tech Guild, which represents more than
| 600 staffers, on Tuesday voted to authorize a strike in
| protest of stalled contract negotiations with The Times'
| management, sources confirmed to Axios.
|
| I haven't found anything else. While stalled contract
| negotiations would be reasonable ("we're not going to work
| without a contract"), it appears that so far those
| negotiations aren't public for what it is that they want.
|
| ...
|
| > I'd consider lowering executive compensation as well.
|
| The CEO has a total compensation package of about $10M per
| year. Lets slash that to $4M (average for the size of the
| company of NYT is $8M - so half of what a CEO would get
| somewhere else) and divide that $6M up between 600 tech
| workers and they got a $10k pay raise. If this to be
| divided between all the workers for NYT, it's a $1k pay
| raise.
|
| While we can bemoan the amounts that CEOs get, slashing the
| salaries will not often produce significant increases for
| the rest of the workers.
| ugh123 wrote:
| These are high paid tech workers in a high paid industry. How
| are they being exploited? Everyone of them has the means to
| find a new job in that industry. I do believe other industries
| need various protections:
| police/fire/teachers/industrial/manufacturing/trades.
| forty wrote:
| Maybe this industry as a whole is driven by capitalists who
| all have a common interest in taking a bigger share of the
| pie than they deserve? :)
|
| ie it's not because you are well paid that you are paid
| enough or fairly
| consteval wrote:
| These "X has it worse" arguments are tiresome and lack any
| sort of rigor.
|
| There's modern day slavery in the world. Today. Even in the
| US we have compelled labor - it's a whole thing in the
| Georgia prison system. Those McDonald's burger flippers are
| essentially slaves, and I bet you didn't know that.
|
| But if we subscribe to the ideology of "X has it worse"
| nothing would get done, ever.
|
| The reality is even in seemingly prosperous industries
| workers, laborers, DO NOT have equal leverage in
| negotiations. Not even close. What you're describing is
| relying on the generosity of the corporations who employ
| them. A fine strategy, but hardly sustainable. They, too, can
| look to improve their situation.
| ugh123 wrote:
| >What you're describing is relying on the generosity of the
| corporations who employ them
|
| No i'm not. I'm highlighting the market forces within a
| competitive, highly paid job market.
|
| These people have options. Other industries, not so much.
| jawerty wrote:
| As someone who worked here seems odd they'd need a strike pretty
| good pay/benefits
| mountainriver wrote:
| Hrm I interviewed there and the pay was definitely sub par
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Many media companies do not have particularly good pay, nor
| interesting work, for their developers. I spoke with someone
| who worked as a dev at Bloomberg, and he described his job as
| "hooking up javascript listeners all day".
| matrix87 wrote:
| for nyc the pay is pretty weak
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I think all we need to see is a compensation package equivalent
| to big tech or even greater, amplified by shares and the
| trendiest cliff for vesting, and tech unions will take off
| nationwide
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not. There is a huge
| reason big tech can afford those compensation packages for
| employees, and the _vast_ majority of companies can simply not
| afford that.
|
| As someone who's been both a union member and on the management
| side, it's frustrating when all sides don't realize that unions
| don't magically make money available to distribute to
| employees. There is certainly the argument that money needs to
| be distributed more equitably, but in a lot of cases (having
| seen this directly) there is simply not much money to move
| around.
|
| Certainly, I'd love it if Google's never-ending money spigot
| was available to all.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I wasn't being sarcastic, NY Times is publicly traded too and
| is fully capable of the model where annual share grants are
| equal to the base salary, as opposed to a tiny sprinkle
| you're supposed to be grateful for in leu of none at all.
|
| Their tech team isn't that big, their $8bn marketcap could
| handle the share grants.
|
| I had been critical of how wages haven't kept up with
| expenses for 30 years, while enamored by big tech
| compensation packages. In my analysis, big tech compensation
| packages are only reaching parity with the model of what
| wages would look like if they kept up with expenses, in which
| case I still shouldn't be impressed or worry about a
| comparison to what other fields are making. If value can be
| rationalized, and collective bargaining can extract it, then
| do that, I'm into it now since we're close.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| According to Google, the NY Times has a profit margin of
| 6-10% in most quarters. They're not exactly rolling in
| cash. Not to mention, there's a bunch of other teams at the
| NY Times that presumably want raises too. What's the
| justification for giving a raise to developers, but not to
| the writers that produce the company's main product?
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| I'm sure the tech guild would be happy for the writers'
| union to win contract raises too. I don't know why you
| think they wouldn't be.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Is there enough money to afford the proposed pay raises?
| 6% profit margin isn't much. Granting the proposed pay
| raises to both groups could easily put the company in the
| red.
| mattdotc wrote:
| Not sure where your 6% figure comes from, but you can
| easily find the 2023 Annual Report which states the
| following:
|
| > Adjusted operating profit margin (adjusted operating
| profit expressed as a percentage of revenues) increased
| to 16.1% in 2023, compared with 15.1% in 2022.
|
| You might also look into the NYT's recent history of
| stock buybacks while denying raises to their lowest-paid
| employees. The money is there.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| There are a host of other real expenses that need to be
| paid that "adjusted operating profit" doesn't account
| for. I'd be really surprised if total net profit was more
| than 50-65% of that.
| mattdotc wrote:
| Point taken. I'd still maintain that the stock buybacks
| are egregious and need to stop.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=ny+times+profit+margin
|
| In June it was 10.6%, in March it was 6.9%
| yieldcrv wrote:
| share compensation doesn't use cash
| Manuel_D wrote:
| It does use cash unless the company dilutes the stock by
| adding more shares. And if they dilute stock, they're
| effectively taking money from the existing shareholders.
| There's no free lunch.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| being a public company with a liquid market is a license
| to print shares and the market can decide if it wants to
| stick around at a similar company valuation
|
| my primary observation is that the world NY Times was
| formed or floated shares in didn't have the same
| shareholder tolerances that exist now
|
| tech companies are controlled by one or two key founders,
| which wouldn't fly at one point, with rampant dilution
|
| they rely on the appetite of the market, and in some
| other risk on stock markets around the world, even more
| extremes are seen to fit the appetite of the market
|
| nobody is suggesting its a free lunch, if the market
| tolerates it then its available to attract talent
| competitively, or for talent to collectively bargain to
| extract that value
|
| with the dilution not occurring all at once, I bet you'd
| be surprised what shareholders would tolerate
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The board of the directors represents the shareholders,
| and they would likely not approve of any significant
| dilution. Again, the money has to come from _somewhere_.
| Either from revenues, or from the existing shareholders.
| The latter would just tell the union to pound sand,
| unless the Times is genuinely struggling to recruit
| talent (not likely).
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > while enamored by big tech compensation packages.
|
| The thing I think that is highly ironic is that a huge
| reason you are "enamored with big tech pay packages" is
| that they're enormous, and a huge reason they're enormous
| is they sucked up a ton of the revenue that _used_ to go to
| newspapers.
|
| I think fair equity grants are a great idea, but as another
| commenter said I don't see why this should in any way be
| specific to the tech team. What I think is just darn right
| silly is to compare compensation packages at _any_
| newspaper with big tech. It 's simply unrealistic to think
| that there is enough money at other companies to pay those
| extremely high salaries.
|
| Here's a very easy exercise for you: I haven't looked it
| up, but I'd be definitely willing to bet per-employee
| average _compensation_ at, say, Google or Facebook is
| higher than per-employee _revenue_ at the NYT.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| yes, that used to go to newspaper and overhead costs that
| don't scale like newspaper
|
| the current structure mandates that other teams have to
| advocate for themselves, and we'll find out whats worth
| what
| taeric wrote:
| What are their demands?
|
| And, cynically, is anyone even going to notice that they are
| striking? Seems unlikely, to be honest.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| Haha, such a good point- no one will notice. I would bet 99% of
| them do "make work" tasks.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| One of their key demands is to continue to allow remote work:
| https://www.axios.com/2023/10/30/nyt-tech-workers-walk-out
| taeric wrote:
| I saw that mentioned. Was hoping someone had a link that was
| a bit more informative.
|
| Edit: This is also an older link?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| It looks like this is the union's platform:
| https://nytimesguild.org/contract-campaign/
| taeric wrote:
| Thanks for the link. Hate that a lot of their demands
| seem to be to leverage things they want over positions
| not covered by their guild.
|
| Is that actually a common thing that I just didn't know?
| I'd not expect a union to impact interviewing practices
| for all entry-level jobs somewhere.
| paxys wrote:
| I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that people will notice
| when the New York Times website stops working.
| kingnothing wrote:
| If the Times goes down because the engineers are on strike
| for a few weeks or months, the engineers were not very good
| at their jobs.
| taeric wrote:
| I honestly wouldn't expect many to notice, all told. If
| Google can't index them so that headlines can be shown on
| searches, I'd expect larger losses.
|
| That said, if the state of the tech there is such that a
| strike will cause it to immediately stop working... that
| doesn't exactly speak well for the work they have done.
|
| Unless they are allowed to shut that stuff down as part of
| their strike? That feels very unlikely to me; but I don't
| know.
| tqi wrote:
| > Kathy Zhang, a senior analytics manager with The Times and the
| guild's unit chair, said, "Management has really dragged its feet
| when it comes to bargaining," between the union formation and
| now.
|
| Maybe tangential, but I would have guessed people managers were
| not eligible to be a member of the union. Does anyone know how
| eligibility is determined?
| arcticbull wrote:
| Maybe the title is for an IC role, as for a "customer success
| manager."
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Generally anyone below director level makes sense imho.
|
| The biggest advocate of pay rises and improvements to
| conditions is often the line level managers and those one step
| up from the line level managers. If this is a typical corporate
| job title this is a manager of line level managers. He probably
| has quarterly 1:1s or at least office hours supporting those at
| the lowest levels. It's not like you become a line level
| manager, accept the 20% pay rises and suddenly change your
| outlook on everything. You're never that far removed. Advocacy
| is important for management so I have no issues with this.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| It is not clear to me whether going on a strike is a good idea
| for the New York Times tech workers:
|
| Since media is not a sector that has high margins, when a company
| gets under pressure to have to increase the salaries (e.g. by
| strikes), the management better starts to analyze how you can
| reduce the number of, in this case, tech workers because with
| thin margins, budging in these negotiations is much more
| dangerous for the mere existence of the business than if the
| margins are high.
|
| Instead of going on strike, it would in my opinion be a better
| idea for the tech workers to look for a better paid job in an
| industry with higher margins.
| evantbyrne wrote:
| Maybe they want to stay in news media. When I worked at The
| Atlantic, a lot of my coworkers were highly motivated by the
| subject matter of their work and perceived quality of their
| newsroom.
| debacle wrote:
| Then, like gaming or Hollywood, their salaries will be lower.
| dymk wrote:
| And they're protected by a union
| lacker wrote:
| Maybe the New York Times will end up both with a unionized
| tech workforce, and a lower-paid one. Personally, I would
| never want to join a union or work as management at a
| company with a union, but I am still kind of curious to see
| what the result of a tech workforce unionizing would be.
| dymk wrote:
| Presumably, the tech workers at NYT have a better idea of if
| striking is a good idea, as they're employed there and have
| better visibility into motives and margins
| quickthrowman wrote:
| That sounds plausible, but the New York Times is a publicly
| traded company that is obligated to file quarterly reports
| with the SEC, anyone can see their margins and motives.
|
| https://www.nytco.com/investors/reports-and-filings/
| dymk wrote:
| That's not anything like working there
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| > the management better starts to analyze how you can reduce
| the number of, in this case, tech workers because with thin
| margins
|
| This happens anyway, regardless of how well a company is doing.
| Tech has been laying off workers with record profits and very
| high margins. But I trust the workers to have better insight
| than you (or me) of whether the strike is beneficial for them
| or not in the long run.
| lacker wrote:
| This doesn't seem like a purely economical strike. It's not a
| coincidence that the most unionized tech workforce in the
| country is the New York Times, an organization that is
| fundamentally pro-union in its politics. When the organization
| as a whole is consistently delivering a pro-union message,
| doesn't it just make sense that the employees would tend to be
| ideologically pro-union?
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| I am trying to justify 622 Tech workers with the 700mm visits
| noted.
|
| _Can someone explain it to me?_
|
| 622 * $124,584 [0] * 1.25 = $96,864,060/year
|
| Their CPM and CPC would need to be seriously fine tuned to
| sustain this.
|
| $5 per 1,000 visitors (CPM): they would need 19.37 billion ad
| impressions.
|
| Similar problem when calculating CPC with $0.10 to $2 range.
|
| I cannot see how they are still in business.
|
| [0] https://www.roberthalf.com/us/en/insights/career-
| development...
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Don't forget to include subscription revenue, also their extra
| offerings of games, cooking, etc
| mattdotc wrote:
| I think it's funnier when the dimmest hacker news commenters
| weigh in on topics like this and demonstrate how far out of
| their depth they are.
| emeril wrote:
| it's been a while since I worked in adtech so unsure best where
| to source/verify those impressions but much of NYT views are by
| paid subscribers so I'd imagine that funds at least a good
| chunk of those workers salaries?
|
| further, I also don't know much of of NYT's tech but it doesn't
| seem especially difficult or cutting edge so 622 tech workers
| does seem a bit bloated though I guess they might need a little
| staff for IT in various locations worldwide so that adds up
| maybe?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The NY Times is mostly subscription funded now:
|
| > Subscription revenue in the quarter grew 7.3 percent, to
| $439.3 million, compared with the previous year. Total
| advertising revenue was up 1.2 percent, at $119.2 million.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/07/business/media/new-
| york-t....
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