Other New York Times Workers On Strike

When a person wielding a sword and an axe entered the New York Times constructing final month and demanded to talk with a reporter, it was safety staff, amongst them Karen Letellier, who confronted him, ordering him to give up his bag and drop to the bottom.

“Our job is a huge responsibility,” mentioned Letellier, 36, a concierge who has labored for the Times for 5 years. “There is no room for mistakes when people’s lives are at risk.”

Letellier, like different safety staff, can also be one of many lowest-earning workers at The New York Times. She is among the many practically 1,100 New York Times Guild members who walked off the job for twenty-four hours at midnight Thursday. They’re a part of a union that features reporters, editors and assistants, but in addition lower-wage staff like safety guards, IT specialists, ushers and gross sales coordinators who earn as little as $52,000 yearly.

They, like all of the Times staffers on strike, contend they’ve misplaced out on the Gray Lady’s increase of current years. One of the few worthwhile media corporations within the nation, it reported a $36.6 million revenue within the third quarter and an working revenue of $51 million, up from $49 million the earlier 12 months, at the same time as it spent $550 million to buy the sports activities news web site The Athletic, and an undisclosed quantity in “the low seven figures” vary for the Wordle sport app this 12 months. 

Among the union calls for nonetheless on the desk: Increasing the wage flooring to $65,000, which the corporate has to this point refused even because it approved $150 million in inventory buybacks this 12 months.

The union estimates the proposals to value the corporate roughly $100 million over the four-year lifetime of the contract. Management and the union have been bargaining for 20 months, ever for the reason that contract spanning roughly 1,400 staffers expired in March 2021.

Many staff haven’t acquired any advantage or negotiated enhance, except for contractual raises, in additional than a decade, mentioned Bill Baker, an IT specialist on the Times firm for 16 years. Many in his division earn annual salaries within the vary of $55,000, Baker mentioned. 

“There has been no real upward mobility for people in my department” aside from being promoted to non-union positions, he mentioned.

‘We Deserve It’

The work stoppage, the likes of which has not been seen on the Times in decades, left a number of main desks with out workers. The final main Guild-led work stoppage on the scale of Thursday’s strike was a multiday strike in September and October of 1965. In 2017, Times staffers staged a short lunchtime walkout to protest deliberate cuts to the newsroom’s copy enhancing workers.

The union presently consists of reporters, editors and analysis and news assistants throughout the nation, in addition to safety personnel and staff on the enterprise aspect — together with its IT, finance and promoting division — employed by the corporate in its headquarters on eighth Avenue close to Times Square.

While a lot of the general public’s focus has rested on the Times’ reporters and editors, who make up the majority of the bargaining unit, union activists are aware that administrative workers have probably the most urgent wants.

“We’re representing people with such varied jobs and interests, so this can be a chance for us to make sure we’re covering all those bases and a big part of our ask this time around,” mentioned grievance chair Jim Luttrell, a senior editor.

“We’re not being greedy. We deserve it,” mentioned concierge Lila Rivera, 49, of the union’s $65,000 wage flooring demand. “It’s our responsibility to make this place safe.”

Workers at The New York Times have been represented by the NewsGuild of New York since 1940. The unit has traditionally included safety guards, gross sales coordinators and customer support representatives alongside reporters and editors.

In earlier a long time, the unit additionally included cafeteria staff and constructing administration at its outdated headquarters in Times Square earlier than these positions have been outsourced, mentioned Baker, who’s a unit chair.

A separate unit representing some 700 tech staff — engineers and designers who handle the web site interface and its news apps — voted to unionize with the NewsGuild of New York this 12 months. Those workers staged a “collective lunch break” in solidarity with their placing co-workers on Thursday.

Seeing Red

Scores of Times staff — sporting crimson clothes, the NewsGuild’s colour — attended a day rally in entrance of the newspaper’s headquarters close to Times Square.

Among the audio system was Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones, a unit council member.

“When this paper struggled, all of us had to share in its austerity,” she mentioned. “When this paper is doing well, the people who work hard every day to make this place a global phenomenon deserve to share in success.”

No labor motion has stopped manufacturing of the paper since the New York City newspaper strike of 1978, which halted the print and distribution of a number of newspapers within the area, together with The New York Times, for 88 days. 

“It is disappointing that they are taking such an extreme action when we are not at an impasse,” New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha mentioned in a press release. “Though we’ve made progress and offered several new proposals this week to address issues identified as priorities by the Guild, we still have much more work to do when we return to the bargaining table.”

Throughout Thursday, the Times was publishing and sharing tales throughout social platforms and its cell app, together with a news alert for WNBA star Brittney Griner’s trade launch from a Russian jail.

The firm started planning for the work stoppage final week, asking reporters to file stories early as if getting ready for a serious vacation and utilizing further sources like its non-union international staff, ramping up efforts after greater than 1,100 union members signed a pledge to stroll out of the job on Thursday if the 2 sides didn’t attain an settlement.

By Wednesday, the corporate backed off a proposal to switch its present adjustable pension plan with a 401(ok) retirement plan, as an alternative letting the union select between the 2, the Associated Press reported. The firm additionally agreed to broaden fertility therapy advantages.

Workers on the picket line mentioned the choice to go on strike was not simple, nor one they have been desperate to make.

“But we need more money, we need job security,” mentioned safety guard John Garafalo, gesturing on the scores of Times staff picketing on fortieth Street. “These are my people.”