The New York Times ’s long-running labor dispute with its technology staffers is reaching a breaking point, with a potential Election Day strike threatening to interfere with the newsroom’s ability to cover the closely watched presidential race.
Some executives and journalists at the paper are worried that a walkout by members of the 600-person technology workers’ union could disrupt publishing and the quality of election-coverage tools available to subscribers on a day that traffic is expected to surge.
“We have made it clear that we need to reach an agreement before the election in order to avert a strike,” the Times Tech Guild’s bargaining team wrote in a letter to the paper’s board of directors, urging them to intervene.
The Times Tech Guild has been holding meetings and rallies in recent weeks to make its case, including a Saturday demonstration in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza, where workers passed out fliers and chanted “no contract, no code.”
A spokeswoman for the Times called the election deadline timing “arbitrary” and said that it “feels both unnecessary and at odds with our mission.” A representative for the tech guild didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The union spans software engineers, data analysts and project managers, technology workers who have helped the paper transition to the digital era. The Times is working to expand its digital subscriber base, pushing a bundle of apps including its core news, games and cooking offerings, as well as the Athletic and consumer review site Wirecutter.
The standoff ahead of Election Day is a test of a relatively young union’s strength, and adds complexity to an already high-stakes stretch for the newspaper. Without technology workers, Times staffers say the paper could struggle to fix potential bugs or update content from more sophisticated tools like “The Needle,” a tool that predicts who will win the election based on early returns and that is updated as information rolls in.
The paper has “robust plans in place to ensure that we are able to fulfill our mission and serve our readers,” the Times spokeswoman said.
The technology workers’ union says it is fighting for fair wages, greater job protections and benefits that support work-life balance, such as the ability to work remotely full time.
Times executives say workers represented by the union, which hasn’t had a contract since it was formed in 2022, are among the highest paid at the company and enjoy generous time off and insurance coverage, as well as other benefits.
Most employees in the tech union receive pay of more than $100,000, and average compensation, including bonus and restricted stock units, is $190,000, according to a Times spokeswoman. That figure is an average of $40,000 more than members of the Times’s journalist union, she said.
Times leaders have also bristled at the nature of some of the guild’s requests. The union previously sought a requirement that the company use unscented cleaning supplies and offer a pet bereavement policy that included a leave of up to seven days, though it has since backed down from those demands.
It also asked to be informed of any letter to the editor that would mention a staffer by name, and for the right to request that the letter not be published. That requirement, which also has been withdrawn, was deemed by some as having inappropriately crossed a line into editorial affairs.
Bill Grueskin, a professor at Columbia Journalism School and a former Wall Street Journal editor, said the Times and other big news organizations have had to become as strong technologically as they are in journalism, ushering in a new type of workforce.
“Those new workers clearly feel more comfortable than their journalism colleagues would in threatening to shutter the most important news site in the country during the most important election in many decades,” he said.
Some Times newsroom staffers support efforts to unionize but are upset that the Times Tech Guild could jeopardize coverage on one of the most important news days of the year and think the group should give priority to serving readers.
“Guild leadership could have chosen any other day—364 of them, in fact—to make the entirely reasonable point that workers deserve a fair contract,” said Jeremy Peters, a national desk reporter. “They would have had a lot more support from the newsroom if they hadn’t picked the one day a strike seems most likely to undermine and interfere with the hard work of other Guild members.”
Others cheer the union’s efforts. Hundreds of employees from the Times’s newsroom union, which is a separate body but also represented by the NewsGuild-CWA, signed a pledge in October expressing their support of the Times Tech Guild’s effort.
“Your fight is our fight…We know that if you walk out, the election is going to be a mess!” business reporter and Times Guild officer Stacy Cowley said at a rally on Saturday.
Two years ago, the Times’s main newsroom union, which includes more than 1,000 New York Times staffers, staged a one-day strike , its first in over 40 years. The union ultimately secured a contract that included a salary floor of $65,000 and raises of at least 10.6% for all staff.
The technology group’s vote to unionize with the NewsGuild two years ago created the largest union of tech workers with bargaining rights in the country. Contract negotiations between Times management and the tech staff represented by the NewsGuild have moved in fits and starts since then, stalling over pay and benefits.
The company told the guild in September that the union’s initial economic proposals would have added more than $100 million in compensation costs over three years, paying members more for fewer hours of work.
The potential union strike follows years of tense interactions with management over the tech group’s efforts to unionize. Times management resisted the move by tech workers to organize and declined to voluntarily recognize the new union, arguing that a tech union would be an unproven experiment that could compromise collaboration and experimentation.
Write to Alexandra Bruell at alexandra.bruell@wsj.com
