{"id":260774,"date":"2021-08-02T13:48:57","date_gmt":"2021-08-02T13:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2021\/08\/new-york-ny-times-tech-guild-tech-workers-union-newsguild-cwa-labor-organizing\/"},"modified":"2021-08-02T14:08:40","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T14:08:40","slug":"tech-workers-at-the-new-york-times-want-a-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/08\/02\/tech-workers-at-the-new-york-times-want-a-union\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech Workers at the New York Times<\/cite> Want a Union"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

This spring, 700 New York Times<\/cite> tech workers announced their new union, the Times Tech Guild. We talked with two tech workers involved in the campaign about why they\u2019re organizing at the Gray Lady and why unions are crucial even for well-compensated workers.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n Tech workers at the New York Times<\/cite> recently filed for an election with the National Labor Relations Board after management refused to recognize their union. (Ajay Suresh \/ Flickr)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

In April, a majority of the approximately seven hundred technology workers at the New York Times<\/em> \u2014 including programmers, designers, and project managers \u2014 announced <\/a>the formation of a union, the New York Times Tech Guild<\/a>. Management rejected their petition for voluntary recognition almost immediately. But if they do win recognition, the Times Tech Guild will be the largest union representing tech workers with collective bargaining rights in the United States.<\/p>\n

Beginning with a successful union election at Kickstarter<\/a> at the beginning of 2020, the labor movement has found careful footing in a sector that has generally dodged its efforts. While the computer and software industries are among the most profitable sectors of the US economy, unions have virtually no presence in them. A recent survey of tech workers, however, found that approximately half of the respondents<\/a> were interested in joining a union.<\/p>\n

I met with Angie Kim, a software engineer, and Bon Champion, a product designer, of the Times Tech Guild\u2019s organizing committee in July to talk about their campaign. We discussed the challenges they\u2019ve faced in building majority support for their union, the reaction of their employer, and how their campaign fits into a broader landscape of the labor movement across technology and media. Since our conversation, the Times Tech Guild has announced<\/a> they\u2019ve filed for an election with the National Labor Relations Board.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

<\/h2>\n \n
\n \n
Aaron Petcoff<\/dt>\n \n

Could you describe for readers what your relationship to the labor movement was like before your involvement in the New York Times Tech Guild?<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Angie Kim<\/dt>\n \n

Growing up, I didn\u2019t know that much about unions. I feel like the biggest thing that was going on that I was aware of was teachers going on strike. And that almost made unions seem bad, because teachers were stopping kids from going to school.<\/p>\n

For my last college semester in the spring, my final paper that I wrote was on tech-worker organizing. My interest was partly spurred by a pamphlet by Ben Tarnoff called The Making of the Tech Workers\u2019 Movement<\/a><\/em>. Shortly after, the NYC-DSA Tech Action Working Group<\/a> and the Tech Workers Coalition<\/a> held a virtual panel<\/a> on the same topic. I came out of that meeting thinking, \u201cI really hope someday I can be a part of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t hear anything about the union campaign going on during my first few months at the Times<\/em>. But after ranting to one of my coworkers, they told me, \u201cIf this is something you\u2019re interested in working on, there are other people at the Times<\/em> who are trying to change things.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was like [claps<\/em>] I hear it! I recognized that this was an organizing conversation. After that, I learned more about the union effort. I\u2019ve been part of the union organizing committee since about October.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Bon Champion<\/dt>\n \n

I formed a lot of my opinions about labor in school. The Hollywood writers\u2019 strike in 2019 and early efforts to organize digital media led me to this idea that the labor movement is something that I should pay attention to. But the Kickstarter union<\/a> brought it to my front door. I saw that the labor movement was something I could directly participate in and not just passively be supportive of.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t become aware of the union effort at the Times<\/em> until January of this year. If we had been working in the building, I\u2019m certain I would\u2019ve found out earlier. But because everybody is working remotely, people are incredibly isolated from one another based on their function or the teams they work on \u2014 these are really the only people you\u2019re talking to. The bulk of our bargaining unit is software engineers, so as it was, product design in general didn\u2019t get super involved until pretty late.<\/p>\n

One day, a fellow designer who was involved in the effort scheduled an impromptu coffee with me. They gave me the full spiel and I was immediately on board. My involvement began by phone-banking unit members during the final stretch of organizing before announcing our campaign publicly. I was able to get a few people to attend some meetings and even got one person to sign a union card. By that point someone told me, \u201cWe need you on our organizing committee.\u201d So I joined.<\/p>\n

I was actually one of the last people to join the organizing committee before we went public. We\u2019ve had more people join after, but I feel like I kind of made it onto a train just as it was leaving the station. I don\u2019t think I realized how much of a time commitment it was going to be. This has been at least 50 percent of what I\u2019ve been thinking and living and breathing ever since. But I\u2019m glad I did it.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Aaron Petcoff<\/dt>\n \n

What you said, Bon, raises a question I want to ask about one-on-ones.<\/p>\n

At a high level, the one-on-one is really simple. We\u2019re talking about having a direct conversation with a coworker about the workplace. Maybe you\u2019re learning about their concerns or asking them to get involved or support your campaign. This is the foundation of any successful organizing effort.<\/p>\n

In practice, though, these conversations can be challenging. Just based on anecdotes I\u2019ve heard talking to new organizers \u2014 and this was my own experience when I worked at the New Yorker<\/em>, as well \u2014 getting started with one-on-ones can be difficult.<\/p>\n

What was it like for you all to begin having these conversations with your coworkers?<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Bon Champion<\/dt>\n \n

When I began phone banking, I was able to work with my own existing connections in my department, since that was a part of the workplace that wasn\u2019t as hooked into what was going on. I know other organizers who\u2019ve had to reach out to people who they had no prior existing relationship with.<\/p>\n

It was intimidating at first. But it\u2019s also given me a chance to reengage with people that I would\u2019ve been passing in the office or sitting down with for lunch. These are the kinds of connections you miss out on when everything is done over Slack or Google Meet, and every interaction is predetermined by work. Now we have a reason to talk to people about work, but also about our personal lives or other things that have nothing to do with the task at hand.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been really energizing. It reminded me of what\u2019s been lost in the move to just working at home. And now that the weather has changed, there\u2019s a lot more opportunity to have these kinds of conversations in person with coworkers that live near you. That\u2019s been really amazing.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s some barriers you have to hit. It\u2019s weird having to ask people for their phone numbers. There\u2019s a line between a personal friend and a stranger that you kind of have to navigate here. But we\u2019re all figuring this out together.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Angie Kim<\/dt>\n \n

It\u2019s funny to hear you say that we\u2019re all navigating having to figure out asking people for their phone numbers. I\u2019ll literally just DM someone I\u2019ve never talked to and say, \u201cHey, I wanted to talk to you about something, could I get your phone number?\u201d or \u201cDo you have fifteen minutes to meet on Google Meet?\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe part of it is that I have some experience doing one-on-ones just through political involvement in high school and college.<\/p>\n

The thing I love about working at the New York Times <\/em>is that everyone is really friendly and happy to talk. I think that\u2019s a spirit shared among most of my coworkers. So I don\u2019t know if anybody\u2019s been particularly taken aback by me just reaching out. I think there\u2019ve been times when I\u2019ve tried to be sneaky about it and it doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Aaron Petcoff<\/dt>\n \n

Angie, you mentioned in an interview<\/a> published last May that you\u2019ve \u201csometimes felt insecure . . . that as a tech worker, the bread-and-butter issues aren’t so important.\u201d You\u2019re \u201cnot fighting for a living wage, for example.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is something that comes up a lot in the discussion about organizing tech workers. If you look through any thread on Hacker News about unions in the tech industry, you\u2019re virtually guaranteed to find a handful of comments along the lines of, \u201cWhy do tech workers need a union? We\u2019re well paid.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think there\u2019s some general confusion out there that leads people \u2014 maybe for white-collar workers or \u201cprofessionals\u201d in particular \u2014 to think that unions are only for bargaining over money and health care. There\u2019s no real understanding of their having a broader purpose or collective bargaining over a wider set of issues.<\/p>\n

Have you faced this kind of confusion during conversation with your coworkers? How did you respond?<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n

A lot of the designers I\u2019ve spoken with initially wondered if the union was just going to be a bunch of well-paid engineers \u2014 better paid than designers, generally \u2014 asking for more money. But if engineers were only in it for more money, there\u2019s much easier ways to go about doing that than organizing a union of several hundred people to hold an election.<\/p>\n

A lot of the conversations we have in one-on-ones and our union meetings are generally not about salary or benefits. It\u2019s about addressing inequities. One of the things that\u2019s been universal in the conversations I\u2019ve had has been the issue of pay equity and pay transparency, rather than more pay. We\u2019ve started a salary sharing spreadsheet within the union channels. It\u2019s an unofficial way of achieving pay transparency, but we\u2019ve already seen clear inequities, where women and people of color aren\u2019t paid or promoted at the same rates [as their white colleagues]. The newsroom union has found similar results through their studies.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Tech workers participate in a protest. (Tech Workers Coalition \/ Facebook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The union will also allow us to codify a lot of the benefits we already enjoy in our contract. We\u2019re coming out of a four-year boom period for the New York Times<\/em>. But we don\u2019t know what the next four years will look like for the company or for its workers.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been extraordinarily lucky in general in my career, but especially at the Times<\/em>. I\u2019ve had five managers in my five years here. All of them have been excellent. But this is not a universal experience at the Times<\/em>. And it\u2019s entirely random whether you have a really good and positive relationship with your manager or a negative one. I would love it if I could feel confident when I recommend that someone come work at the Times<\/em> that, regardless of what team they work on, they\u2019d have an experience similar to mine. And there\u2019s no way to ensure that without codifying the things that I enjoy into a contract.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I think about. It\u2019s less about my personal gain than what the union can do for all of us. That includes all my colleagues at the New York Times<\/em>, as well as people working in tech at large. I think there\u2019s a lot we can do that\u2019s not just about our bottom line or our own personal gain.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Aaron Petcoff<\/dt>\n \n

But you do have something personal at stake in this. Just citing the example you gave about managers, for instance. You\u2019ve been fortunate to have good managers, but obviously that shouldn\u2019t be left up to luck.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Bon Champion<\/dt>\n \n

Absolutely. No doubt about that.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Angie Kim<\/dt>\n \n

Tech workers at the Times<\/em> aren\u2019t there because they want to make a tech-worker salary. There\u2019s usually some other motivation that draws someone to work here. I don\u2019t necessarily think that everyone stans the New York Times<\/em>, but I do think that the type of person who works here chose to work here instead of one of the big tech companies, where they could make probably twice or even three times as much. So it\u2019s not about the money.<\/p>\n

I think forming a tech-workers union signals that everyone should be organized, even<\/em> tech workers who are relatively well paid and have good benefits. Ultimately, A. G. Sulzberger has way more control than anyone does on their own, even a software engineer.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Aaron Petcoff<\/dt>\n \n

That brings something to mind. There\u2019s an enormous gap between the pay and benefits given to tech workers between the New York Times<\/em>, let\u2019s say, and a more traditional software company. So I do think that media companies get away with something by paying a worker up to $30,000 or $40,000 less than they\u2019d make in another industry.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Angie Kim<\/dt>\n \n

I have such a bone to pick with that. During an all-company meeting, management was asked why they refused to recognize the union. Their response was more or less that tech workers are different. But we\u2019re only different when it benefits them.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Aaron Petcoff<\/dt>\n \n

Similar statements were made against forming a union at Kickstarter. If you recall, a memo<\/a> was circulated there saying that unions are great, just not for tech workers.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Bon Champion<\/dt>\n \n

There\u2019s never been a clarification over how tech workers are substantially different. There are just vague statements. Like, occasionally they\u2019ll talk about \u201cflexibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFlexibility\u201d is on our bingo card<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Angie Kim<\/dt>\n \n

Do they believe the newsroom isn\u2019t \u201cflexible\u201d?<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Bon Champion<\/dt>\n \n

Exactly, there\u2019s no more flexible part of the company than the newsroom. They\u2019re able to respond to events down to the second. This is something that we highlight a lot. The union is all of us. We\u2019re not interested in bargaining a contract that is going to make it harder to do our jobs or whatever.<\/p>\n

What I find so frustrating about management\u2019s claim that a union would harm flexibility is that we don\u2019t have a contract yet. In fact, there\u2019s no real precedent for our contract. They don\u2019t know what it will say any more than we do.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Aaron Petcoff<\/dt>\n \n

Let\u2019s talk about the more immediate confrontation with management. You all petitioned for voluntary recognition in April. Management rejected your petition and said they\u2019d rather take it to an election. This happened in spite of the Times<\/em> management having voluntarily recognized a union at Wirecutter<\/em>, not to mention having one of the oldest union newsrooms in the industry. In fact, the Times<\/em> editorial board has publicly supported card check for union certification in the past.<\/p>\n

Were you all surprised by management\u2019s response? And given the precedents already set for voluntary recognition and union representation at the Times<\/em>, why do you think they\u2019re opposing it now for your unit?<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Angie Kim<\/dt>\n \n

Honestly, I was surprised. Given everything you said, all the precedents like voluntarily recognizing Wirecutter<\/a><\/em>. I think our campaign was prepared for voluntary recognition. We had a pretty solid plan. I was pretty taken aback by the position they took, which happened swiftly, to not recognize us. The only reason I could see for them to not recognize us is that they think it might cost them a lot of money to have some of its highest-paid employees under a union contract, to have salary floors, and better benefits in general.<\/p>\n

I hesitate to say that it\u2019s because they think they can win. A majority has already signed cards saying that they want to join this union. I think it\u2019s a power play on their part to try and sow doubt by saying that they\u2019re hearing people say they\u2019re against the union. But I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the truth. We know how many people are supportive of the union.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Bon Champion<\/dt>\n \n

I was surprised as well, if for no other reason than they wouldn\u2019t want the heat. We have a pretty active and engaged readership. We know that people are pretty upset about this. We put out a public petition after submitting our unfair labor practice complaint and got thousands of signatures from subscribers and online readers. That\u2019s something management brought on themselves. I never thought they\u2019d want to go down this path.<\/p>\n

I think there\u2019s two reasons they decided to oppose the union. One is an acknowledgement of the power of a tech workers\u2019 union of our size. We\u2019d not only make our own department stronger but the newsroom as well. There\u2019s a lot of competition to hire new tech workers, and the Times<\/em> doesn\u2019t offer the best pay. We are difficult to replace, and that gives us some sway. I think that the choice to not voluntarily recognize our unit is an acknowledgement of that power. I don\u2019t think they\u2019re wrong. I think we would have a lot of power.<\/p>\n

The other thing \u2014 and this is more speculative \u2014 is the return to office. They\u2019re currently making decisions about returning to the office behind closed doors. The only input from workers has been a survey that management interpreted themselves. That\u2019s the way they\u2019d like to make decisions at this company. In that case, if the union loses the election, that\u2019s a win for them. But in case the union wins, we\u2019ve already begun returning to the office without any chance to negotiate the terms.<\/p>\n

Again, this is all based on my own speculation. But certainly the more time they have to act unilaterally, the better it is for them.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Aaron Petcoff<\/dt>\n \n

\u201cFlexibility.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Bon Champion<\/dt>\n \n

Exactly. That would \u2014 will \u2014 change with a union.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Angie Kim<\/dt>\n \n

I think this shows that, even though the Times<\/em> has a reputation as a liberal publication, and a person might think that management has at least a slightly favorable attitude toward labor, it\u2019s still a profit-seeking company.<\/p>\n

The newsroom is responsible for the primary product of the Times<\/em>, but there\u2019s an entirely separate business side to the organization. That\u2019s the side making these decisions. It\u2019s not the newsroom calling the shots. When we think of the New York Times<\/em>\u2019 leadership, it\u2019s not a writer or editor making that decision \u2014 it\u2019s the chief executive officer.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Aaron Petcoff<\/dt>\n \n

I want to ask about the employer\u2019s claims. We\u2019ve already talked about their argument that a union would impose undue constraints on how the workplace operates. They also said that they\u2019ve been approached by people who are concerned about how a union might affect them or their careers.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m curious how management\u2019s opposition has affected your colleagues. What have the more challenging conversations been like with your coworkers who\u2019ve been more hesitant to support the union?<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Bon Champion<\/dt>\n \n

A contract would enforce some constraints. There\u2019s no getting around that. But, like I said earlier, the constraints would be in the interest of greater fairness. Things like pay floors or stipulations to encourage greater hiring of people underrepresented in journalism, like the New Yorker Union recently won in its contract<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Angie Kim<\/dt>\n \n

There will be people who will not come 100 percent in support of our effort. It\u2019s not our job as organizers to insist that everyone agrees with us. Our work is to consider people\u2019s concerns, work with them, and to organize around the overall concerns of the entire workforce and build a contract around that. It\u2019s not to get everyone on the same page about every specific issue.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Bon Champion<\/dt>\n \n

We\u2019re made stronger by these conversations with people who are more hesitant about the union, or want to learn more, or maybe had some negative experience with a union in the past. Our union\u2019s going to be all these people, with all these experiences, and can be built around that. Let\u2019s make the best version of our union.<\/p>\n

This was something I wasn\u2019t entirely prepared for when I joined the organizing committee. But we all learn from each other\u2019s experience and conversations. We\u2019ve gotten a lot of helpful input from the people at the NewsGuild and the Times<\/em> newsroom union based on their experience as well.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Aaron Petcoff<\/dt>\n \n

How valuable has the NewsGuild-CWA been for you all on your campaign?<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Bon Champion<\/dt>\n \n

I can only speak to the later phases of our campaign after I got involved, but I don’t think the contributions of the NewsGuild can be understated. We talk a lot about how we’d be the largest tech union in the country, and how little precedent there is for what we’re doing, but I’m so thankful that we’re not actually building this thing from scratch. We’ve benefitted from their insight on past campaigns, their knowledge of structures and strategies, and simply all they’ve learned from decades of trial and error.<\/p>\n

And through it all, our organizers and our colleagues at the NewsGuild have never lost sight of the fact that this is our union, made up of us and our coworkers. If we want to deviate from an existing plan or strategy, we talk about it, we deliberate, and we do it.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Aaron Petcoff<\/dt>\n \n

News and media companies have been radically transformed over the past year as their businesses became recentered around the web and technology. I think the most notorious example of this was when Tribune Publishing briefly rebranded itself as \u201ctronc<\/a>\u201d in 2016 \u2014<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Angie Kim<\/dt>\n \n

That\u2019s fucking horrible.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Aaron Petcoff<\/dt>\n \n

I\u2019m curious if you think the shift in media toward a more tech-centered business model gives tech workers more potential power?<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

\n \n
Angie Kim<\/dt>\n \n

I think the push to treat the Times<\/em> as a tech company is very prevalent. For example, hiring people from Facebook and Netflix to come into senior leadership. Management\u2019s vision is clearly to take the methods of Silicon Valley tech culture and to bring that to the Times.<\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why it\u2019s more important than ever for us to be organized. If the trend is for companies to publish more clickbait, to optimize for more social media engagement, etc., I think it\u2019s urgent to have the noneditorial workers organized.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n \n \n\n \n \n \n\n\n

This post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In April, a majority of the approximately seven hundred technology workers at the New York Times \u2014 including programmers, designers, and project managers \u2014 announced the formation of a union, the New York Times Tech Guild. Management rejected their petition for voluntary recognition almost immediately. But if they do win recognition, the Times Tech Guild [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7357,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260774"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7357"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260774"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260775,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260774\/revisions\/260775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}