New York Times staff rally to demand contract

More than 100 New York Times employees walked out of the newspaper's midtown headquarters Wednesday to rally for a new contract, almost three months after their last one expired. 

The staff are members of the Times Guild, the largest bargaining unit of the NewsGuild of New York representing more than 1,500 editorial, advertising and support staff at the Gray Lady.

The Guild has been bargaining for a new contract since January with five core priorities: raises to keep up with rising cost of living, affordable healthcare, guaranteed hybrid work, AI guardrails, and expansion of the Guild across the newspaper.

Near-weekly bargaining has yielded little progress, Raoul Anchondo, a Times staff editor and member of the Guild’s bargaining committee, told The Chief.

“This was an attempt to send a clear message to management that their current approach to bargaining is unacceptable and that we need to see real movement around all of our core priorities and expect a fair contract,” he said. 

The Times has had a “fair contract proposal” ready since October, a spokesperson for the newspaper told The Chief.

“It's been 226 days without a response from the Guild on our wage proposals. A deal will get done when the Guild is ready to engage in serious negotiations on the major issues,” they said.

Raoul Anchondo, staff editor at the New York Times and member of the Times Guild's bargaining committee, holds up a copy of the newspaper's sports section used in a silent protest at an all-staff meeting earlier this week.

Brennan LaBrie/ The Chief

'We'd be taking a pay cut'

This was the third action taken by the Guild this week, following a mass email to administration by over 500 staff, and a silent protest at the recent all-hands meeting while CEO Meredith Kopit Levien spoke. 

The guild is seeking pay increases that both keep up with inflation and reflect staff contributions to a company that saw over $431 million in profits last year, according to public filings.

The company’s proposed 3 percent annual salary increase doesn’t meet the union's needs, Anchondo said, pointing to factors like housing inflation, which rose 4.4 percent last year. 

“Essentially, if we accepted the current proposal we’d be taking a pay cut,” he said. 

Another sticking point in bargaining is the Times’ proposed healthcare package, which would leave the Guild’s healthcare fund in a $8 million deficit, said Andrea Zagata, senior staff editor for news design.

Zagata, who credits the Times' healthcare plan with supporting her through 10 years of breast cancer treatment, warned that her care would not be possible under management's proposed healthcare package. 

“The place I started at 10 years ago was one that cared about its employees, and I’m waiting for that company to show up at the table,” she said. 

The Times is facing significant inflation in its medical costs but is willing to make "the largest contribution it has ever made” to the Guild’s healthcare fund, the newspaper spokesperson said. Since the healthcare fund is administered jointly between the union and the company, the Times is looking for clearer wage and healthcare proposals from the Guild, they added. 

Brennan LaBrie/ The Chief

Union seeking to grow its ranks

Another Guild demand would bring more Times staffers into their unit. Writers at The Athletic, which has served as the Times’ de facto sports desk since 2023, are not union members. Neither are dozens of other employees across departments like audio, video and games, Anchondo said. 

This “unfair exclusion” creates a “two-tier” system of worker protections and benefits, said Evan Easterling, an editor and former sports writer at the Times. 

“It’s the same work, the same website, the same pages, and in some cases, even the same people, but not the same union. Does that make sense?” he said. 

The Times is open to recognizing The Athletic’s U.S. editorial staff as its own bargaining unit if a majority of them demonstrate support for it, the spokesperson said. Staff at Wirecutter, a product review platform acquired by the Times in 2016, formed their own NewsGuild unit in 2019. 

In an speech at the rally, metro desk reporter Ed Shanahan made an impassioned plea for another Guild priority: “robust common sense guard rails” to protect reporters’ integrity, reputations and jobs. 

“Since we're the ones doing the work, we want provisions that give us a measure of control over AI's role in our professional lives. Above all, we want any use of AI to have human oversight, something management negotiators, including newsroom leaders, have rejected,” he said. 

Artificial intelligence has already impacted the newsroom, Anchondo said, including half the art production team after the introduction of an AI imaging tool.

The Times has implemented “industry-leading protections to ensure A.I. tools are used ethically and with transparency,” the spokesperson said. However, they believe it’s “imprudent” to add contractual restrictions given the “rapid and constantly changing nature” of AI. 

On Tuesday, staff said their union placards were removed from their desks. This removal was done by mistake and stopped after management learned about it, the Times spokesperson told The Chief.