Unionized journalists on the New York Times are heading right into a essential negotiating session with administration on Tuesday that may decide whether or not greater than 1,000 members of the NewsGuild will make good on their risk to stage a one-day walkout Thursday.
The two sides are feuding over pay hikes, health care and pension plans as they head right into a bargaining session that’s slated to stretch from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
“We will walk out and stop work for 24 hours, on Thursday, Dec. 8, if we do not have a deal for a complete and equitable contract by then,” Bill Baker, the NYT’s unit chair for the NewsGuild mentioned in a memo Friday despatched to writer A.G. Sulzberger, scion of the household that controls the Gray Lady, and president and CEO Meredith Kopit Levien.
The memo was signed by almost 1,100 union members that included journalists, photographers and a few enterprise facet folks.
However, hopes are wanting bleak {that a} deal can be hammered out earlier than Thursday – main to the opportunity of the primary main work stoppage on the Times since 1978.
“Baker sent the memo first thing Friday morning and the hope was that management would get back to him right away and start round-the-clock negotiations over the weekend. But that did not happen,” mentioned a supply shut to the union.
The firm has proposed giving union members making $120,000 a yr an extra $32,103 in compensation over the following two and a half years, in accordance to a memo despatched by Times affiliate managing editor Cliff Levy to all Guild staff on Nov. 10.
The union countered Friday that the pay hike proposals on the desk would solely elevate wages by a median of two.75% a yr – far under the price of inflation.
On Monday, the Times mentioned its supply quantities to an 11% elevate that features a 5% retroactive hike upon ratification and three% wage hikes every in 2023 and 2024.
“While we are disappointed that the NewsGuild is threatening to strike, we are prepared to ensure the Times continues to serve our readers without disruption,” a Times spokesperson informed The Post. “We remain committed to working with the NYT NewsGuild to reach a contract that we can all be proud of. Our current wage proposal offers significant increases.”
The union additionally has accused The Times of making an attempt to increase prices for well being care and finish the pension plan that pays staff a lifetime pension – changing it with a 401(ok) plan that may cease being funded by the employer as quickly as an individual retired.
“We’re looking for wages that keep pace with inflation and the preservation of our health care and pension benefits,” mentioned Ken Belson, an NYT sports activities reporter who was quoted within the NewsGuild assertion.
The union additionally claimed that the $150 million inventory buyback the Times made in February far exceeded the price of the wage and profit hikes it’s in search of over your complete course of a brand new multi-year contract. It additionally pointed to the very generous bonuses doled out to executives. The prime three noticed compensation will increase of 32.3% final yr, the union mentioned.
“We have been bargaining in good faith for 20 months while management’s goal has been to slow-walk us to an inferior contract,” mentioned Baker, the unit chair who can be the telecommunications coordinator on the Times. “This has to stop now. It’s time for the company to get serious about making a fair deal.”
A strike may disrupt publication of different papers – together with the NY Post, Newsday and the regional editions of the Wall Street Journal and USA Today – if the commerce unions on the Times resolve to honor the NewsGuild’s one-day walkout, since these papers outsource their printing to the Times’s College Point printing plant.
John Heffernan, president of the pressmen’s union and the umbrella Allied Printing Trades Council that features the drivers, electricians and different trades, is scheduled to meet Wednesday following the session between the Guild and administration.
“We support them and will see how to further support them,” Heffernan informed The Post. “I’ll know more Wednesday.”
Despite the more and more acrimonious negotiations, some insiders doubt sufficient staffers will go for a full strike. The union has but to schedule the strike authorization vote from membership, a essential step within the escalating labor battle.
“The New York Times is like a cult or a religion,” mentioned one supply concerned with the petitioning efforts. “There’s a lot of whining, but I don’t know that the majority of members are ready for a full strike.”
The Times has had a historical past of labor disruptions. There have been transient lunch-hour newsroom protests by the Guild in 2011 in a dispute over wages and in 2017 in protest over plans to axe copy editors.
Those protests stopped work for just a few hours, however a one-day “strike” could be the primary main work interruption on the Gray Lady for the reason that 88-day strike that began on Aug. 10, 1978.
At that point, the Daily News and The Post additionally went on strike since they shared the identical commerce unions. The Post resumed publication about 50 days into the strike when its father or mother News Corp hammered out a brand new deal with the pressmen’s union. But the News and Times didn’t settle the strike till Nov. 5.
During the 1978 strike, some main journalists banded collectively to produce a 24-page parody broadsheet newspaper known as “Not The New York Times” that was edited by National Lampoon editor Tony Hendra and Paris Review founder George Plimpton – with contributions that ranged from Carl Bernstein to Jerzy Kosinski in addition to most of the out-of-work Times reporters.
A 1963 strike resulted within the launch of The New York Review of Books, which began as a strike publication to change the lacking e book critiques and has remained in publication ever since.