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In September, the New York Occasions Tech Guild authorized a strike against the paper. “We are sending Occasions management a stable message with our vote today,” said Kathy Zhang, a Senior Analytics Manager at the paper. “Our work produces astonishing value in this company. Our participants have earned a fair contract and we’re ready to attain whatever it takes to make sure we accept it.” The guild, which represents some 6,000 workers, many of whom back as data analysts, software engineers, and other IT professionals who fortify the paper’s digital operations, sought to spend the strike as a means of driving the paper’s management to the bargaining table for a fair and equitable contract.
The strike commenced on November 4th. All via the effort, workers marched with indicators outdoors the paper’s headquarters in New York, whereas the Guild asked readers now to not scandalous the “digital wood line” —meaning that they refrain from interacting with any of the paper’s on-line merchandise (fancy its host of mobile games) that Guild participants are accountable for maintaining.
Now, on the opposite hand, after most efficient about a week, the Guild participants have determined to halt their strike. They don’t have a contemporary contract, and it’s not clear what was accomplished other than effecting a restricted disruption to the paper’s information coverage.
The action was criticized for its timing, which coincided with the final hours of the U.S. presidential election, thus impacting the newspaper’s ability to quilt the race’s conclusion. While this was meant as a bargaining tactic designed to draw the paper’s executives to the table, that tactic doesn’t appear to have worked totally.
No longer all of the Guild participants had been on the same page, as Trade Insider reported that “dozens” of the union participants crossed the wood line. Citing sources familiar with the strike, BI writes that “about 100 of the Guild’s 600 participants” actually ended up engaged on Election Day. Ultimately, the paper was detached able to deploy its smartly-identified election night “needle,” which forecasts the winner of the presidential race, and is made potential by the work of the paper’s tech workers.
Gizmodo reached out to the Tech Guild for comment nonetheless didn’t obtain an immediate response.
Inbox: After a weeklong work stoppage coinciding with the election, unionized New York Occasions tech staff are ending their strike. The Guild said it does not have a contract yet. pic.twitter.com/TQbeuscw3b
— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) November 11, 2024
Trade Insider writes that other workers at the Occasions aren’t necessarily gigantic sympathetic to the Tech Guild’s cause. BI writes that “some Occasions journalists (who are represented by a assorted unit of the same News Guild of New York)” have “previously expressed to BI a lack of sympathy for the tech workers, given their relatively excessive salaries and potential for the strike to impact the outlet’s core journalism mission.”
