A one-day strike.
The New York Times reporters and editors are currently holding a one-day strike because talks between the union and company continue to drag without any progress.
Yes, I’m quoting from The New York Times:
The contract between The Times and The New York Times Guild expired in March 2021, and about 40 bargaining sessions have been held since. Negotiators have failed to come to an agreement on salaries, health and retirement benefits, and other issues.More than 1,100 employees signed a pledge to strike for 24 hours. The union negotiating the contract, which is part of the NewsGuild of New York, represents about 1,450 employees in the newsroom, advertising and other areas of the company. More than 1,800 people work in The Times’s newsroom.
The nonunion employees are in charge today:
In a note to the newsroom, Joe Kahn, the executive editor of The Times, said he was disappointed with the union’s decision.“Strikes typically happen when talks deadlock. That is not where we are today,” Mr. Kahn said. “While the company and the NewsGuild remain apart on a number of issues, we continue to trade proposals and make progress toward an agreement.”—During the walkout, nonunion newsroom employees will largely be responsible for producing the news report.“We will produce a robust report on Thursday,” Mr. Kahn wrote in his email to the newsroom. “But it will be harder than usual.”
Inflation is hitting the newspaper industry hard, along with “a slowdown in advertising.” CNN, BuzzFeed, and the Gannett newspaper chain have recently let go of many employees. I think CNN’s firings come as new CEO Chris Licht wants to clean house to make a more partisan network.
The union negotiators claimed that the employees “are struggling with inflation as the company produces healthy operating profits.”
Meredith Kopit Levien, The Times’s chief executive, reassured journalists “that investments in the news reports had resulted in high-paying, secure jobs for many journalists.”
But at the same time, the “profits had not caught up to where they were decades ago.”
The union plans on holding a demonstration in front of The Times building this afternoon.
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