Reprinted from News Guild CWA press release by its staff on June 13, 2021.
We [at the News Guild CWA] call on Meredith Levien (CEO), A.G. Sulzberger (Publisher), and managers of The New York Times to stop breaking federal labor law, stop union-busting, and recognize the Times Tech Guild union.
A strong majority of the 700 tech workers of The Times announced our union drive in April and requested voluntary recognition, a process which the Times editorial board endorses and that the company granted in 2019 to the Wirecutter Union. Times management responded with a concerted anti-union campaign to try to pressure and influence our coworkers through a series of mandatory anti-union meetings and misleading one-way communications. The Times has further escalated their anti-union campaign by violating federal labor law, so we have filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge at the National Labor Relations Board.
It is our right as workers to organize and show support for our union, and this right is protected by federal labor law. But Times management is telling our colleagues that we cannot show public support for our union if we work with interns or are seeking a promotion. Managers have also begun “polling” workers about their union support, a tactic that is forbidden by law as it is commonly used by management to interrogate, suss out, and target union supporters. The Times is using these combined coercive tactics to attempt to prevent us from exercising our rights to join together and bargain for a more equitable, sustainable, and diverse workplace. Our union, the Times Tech Guild, would be the largest union of tech workers to bargain for a contract in the United States. It is crucial that we put an end to the myth that tech workers are somehow different from other workers by enforcing our rights, both for our union and the future tech workers who will follow us. …
