One day before the election, New York Times tech workers are on strike, taking to a picket line outside the newspaper’s offices. And they’re asking readers not to cross their “digital picket line” by skipping Wordle and other New York Times’s Games and not using the Times Cooking app. Tech workers are also involved in live blogs, push alerts, and—crucially for the election—the famous New York Times election needle.
The New York Times Tech Guild represents more than 600 workers, including software engineers, data analysts, designers, and others behind games like the Daily Crossword, audio products, and the Times’s apps.
The Guild has been in contract negotiations with the New York Times for more than two years. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election to certify the union happened in March 2022, and workers have been bargaining their contract ever since.
In September, the union voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike—with 95% of the union in favor. The paper’s publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, and other leadership were made aware of that decision through a letter. Tech workers are asking for a contract that addresses racial disparities in pay, includes “just cause” job protections (meaning employees can’t be fired without reason or a fair process), and allows for remote/hybrid work.
The Guild has taken labor actions before this; it held a one-day walkout in December 2022 in which it also asked people to skip their Daily Crossword routines. Previously, the Guild has filed multiple unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB against the Times over its return-to-office mandates and “attempts to interrogate members about their intentions to strike,” the Times reports.
The move to strike now coincides with the presidential election, adding more pressure on the company. Though the Guild notes that people can still read New York Times articles without crossing its digital picket line, the election is expected to bring more traffic to the Times website, which can put “stress on the system,” Times senior software engineer and Tech Guild member Kait Hoehne told the Washington Post. Without engineers available to react, that traffic surge could affect the site’s digital infrastructure.
New York Times leadership expressed disappointment that the Guild would strike ahead of the election. Union members say they had no other choice. “Our union members and bargaining committee have done everything possible to avoid this [unfair labor practice] strike,” Kathy Zhang, a senior analytics manager at The New York Times and unit chair of the Tech Guild, said in a statement. “But management is more willing to risk our election coverage than they are to agree to a fair deal with its workers. They have left us no choice but to demonstrate the power of our labor on the picket line. Nevertheless, we stand ready to bargain and get this contract done.”
In October, nearly 750 New York Times journalists signed a pledge of support for the Tech Guild, which also urged management to reach a contract deal ahead of the election. “We can’t do our jobs without the Tech Guild,” the pledge said, per the Post. “Can you imagine if our election needle didn’t work, the app didn’t open or the homepage went down?”
Tech Guild members began picketing outside the New York Times Eighth Avenue entrance Monday at 9 a.m. That picket line will run from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. for the duration of the strike.
The Guild is represented by the NewsGuild of New York. If Times management and the union can’t come to a contract agreement by the end of Monday, the strike will continue into Election Day—becoming the first strike to coincide with a presidential election in the NewsGuild since 1964, when workers at The Detroit News and The Detroit Free Press were on strike.