The New York Occasions expects staff to begin returning to the workplace three days per week beginning this week — however greater than 1,300 journalists are saying hell no, they gained’t go.
It’s simply the newest blow within the more and more bitter contract dispute between the Information Guild journalists union — which incorporates reporters and photographers, in addition to some editors and business-side staff — and higher administration, over wages.
As of Monday, 1,316 Occasions employees had signed a pledge to not return to the workplace. This consists of 879 members of the Information Guild, but in addition members of the Occasions Tech Guild and the union for Wirecutter, the paper’s product-recommendation spinoff.
“Persons are furious,” Tom Coffey informed The Submit. A 25-year veteran editor on the NYT, he works on the information desk and serves on the union’s Contract Motion Committee.
He added that being pressured to return to the workplace throughout a interval of excessive inflation means employees must spend more cash on fuel, mass transit, clothes and lunches, regardless of the shortage of wage will increase.
NYT video journalist Haley Willis tweeted at the moment: “The @nytimes is giving staff branded lunch packing containers this week as a return-to-office perk. We would like respect and a good contract as a substitute — so I’m working from house this week together with 1,300 of my @NYTimesGuild and @NYTGuildTech colleagues, with assist from @WirecutterUnion.”
One supply mentioned that the branded NYT lunch packing containers didn't have any sandwiches or different lunch meals inside. “They have been empty,” mentioned one supply. “And the lunch field had no handles.”
In response to a Occasions spokesperson, there may be not a set variety of days mandated for working within the workplace and it's as much as particular person departments to find out what works for his or her groups — however added: “We proceed to consider that a hybrid work atmosphere most closely fits the New York Occasions at this second.”
“It’s not a compulsory three-day-a-week return to work, per se,” Coffey mentioned, “however they actually do ‘count on’ you to be again within the workplace three days per week.”
The negotiating committee supplied a 4% pay hike in its final bargaining session on Aug. 24 — the primary concrete pay proposal superior by the corporate within the talks. The outdated contract expired on the finish of March 2021.
“They mentioned wages for about two hours and it was very contentious,” mentioned one supply who requested to stay nameless.
Sources with data of the corporate’s stance beforehand informed The Submit that Occasions administration was laying aside wage negotiations till many different points — equivalent to including Juneteenth, Veterans Day and Indigenous Peoples Day to the calendar — have been settled.
However the final wage hike went into impact in March 2020. “The corporate negotiators will not be slow-walking, they're no-walking the wage negotiations,” Coffey claimed.
In response to one other staffer who didn't want to be recognized, “persons are more and more pissed off by the negotiations.”
Along with an 8% elevate, the Information Guild had been demanding a cost-of-living enhance of 5.25% — and insisting that every one employees who can work remotely retain that choice indefinitely, and with no necessary return to workplaces earlier than July 2023. The Submit is informed that the labor union might soften on the cost-of-living hike.
The anti-office pledge follows a “flood-the-inbox” marketing campaign that was unleashed earlier than the final talks in August, during which over 300 journalists despatched emails to Occasions writer A.G. Sulzberger, new government editor Joe Kahn, Opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury and CEO Meredith Kopit Levien.
Many added private notes, a few of which The Submit has seen.
“Public filings present that your pay has been going up far more rapidly than inflation,” wrote enterprise reporter Peter Eavis, including that Sulzberger pulled in a complete bundle of $3.6 million in 2021 in comparison with $2.4 million in 2020.
Kopit Levien noticed her whole bundle in 2021 soar to almost $5.8 million, up from $4.4 million in 2020, Eavis identified.
“Additionally, for the reason that begin of 2020, [the company has] paid out $165 million to our shareholders in dividends and inventory buybacks,” he added within the electronic mail. “That’s money out the door that you simply thought the corporate had no inner use for. Our message at the moment: We actually do want it! Please inform your negotiators to get critical in our contract talks.”
Coffey wrote in his electronic mail that he obtained a pleasant swag bag that included merch emblazoned with the NYT emblem, like an umbrella and a water bottle, to mark his 25-year anniversary — however that the swag didn’t imply a lot when he must pay for his daughter’s school tuition.
“I don’t want knick-knacks,” he wrote. “I want a elevate.”
He added that the 4% hike the corporate proposed can be decreased for members who obtained merit-based pay will increase over the previous two years: “With no wage enhance, it quantities to a de facto pay reduce.”
A Occasions spokesperson informed The Submit: “We respect the rights of our colleagues within the Guild to make their voices heard. We’re actively working with the NYT NewsGuild to achieve a collective bargaining settlement that financially rewards our journalists for his or her contributions to the success of The Occasions, is fiscally accountable as the corporate stays in a progress mode, and continues to take into consideration the trade panorama.
“We offered the NewsGuild with a wage proposal that will supply contractual will increase of 10 % over the remaining two and a half years of the brand new contract. That's considerably larger than in latest Occasions Guild contracts. We sit up for making progress towards an settlement.”
In June, when Kahn stepped into his new function, about 900 journalists despatched an electronic mail asking him to intervene to finish the negotiation logjam and produce a couple of new contract. Kahn was supportive and mentioned employees deserve a elevate for all their arduous work, however that he would go away it to the negotiating committee.
Practically 200 journalists tuned in to a livestream of the Aug. 24 negotiating session. Much more are anticipated to observe the subsequent assembly, set for Sept. 14.
One longtime NYT reporter informed The Submit that it isn't clear how strictly the mandate to be within the workplace three days per week goes to be enforced: “A number of managers will not be too completely happy about having to return to the workplace both.”
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