NY Times employees are getting ready to walk out

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This morning at 8 a.m., New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger and CEO Meredith Kopit Levien received a letter from Bill Baker, unit chair of the Times guild, that was signed by more than 1,000 employees. Subject line: “Enough. If there is no contract by Dec. 8, we are walking out.”

So now they’ve decided to give the boss a hard deadline. The letter demands a weeklong marathon bargaining session over health-care funds and return-to-office policies and their pension plan. But what the employees really want is permanent increases in base pay. If they don’t get enough of a salary bump, they’re going to stop working for 24 hours next Thursday.

A walkout is technically a strike, though one with an end date. There was a one-hour walkout over a lapsed contract in 2011, and another quick afternoon walkout in 2017 over copy editors being eliminated. But those were mostly shows of solidarity. What the employees are preparing to do next week would be something not seen at the paper of record since 1978. Picture it: a full day without the New York Times. No one covering the tumult in Guangzhou or inside Buckingham Palace or what our president is saying. From midnight to midnight, no reporting, no filing stories, no podcasting, no comment moderating, and definitely no responding to editors’ queries. There would be no live briefings. (You’d be shocked at how many people it takes to produce one of those things.) Even logging into Oak (that’s their CMS) will be seen as scabby. Reporters tell me they’re ready to picket outside the building, too.

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The staff is steamed because they feel the paper is sitting on a pot of gold. “We have been lectured about the dire economic future the company faces — even as the company tells Wall Street about a successful corporation that can afford to pay millions in salaries and benefits to its top executives,” states the letter.

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Would you miss the NYT

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Picture it: a full day without the New York Times. No one covering the tumult in Guangzhou or inside Buckingham Palace or what our president is saying. From midnight to midnight, no reporting, no filing stories, no podcasting, no comment moderating, and definitely no responding to editors’ queries. There would be no live briefings. (You’d be shocked at how many people it takes to produce one of those things.) Even logging into Oak (that’s their CMS) will be seen as scabby.

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Picture it: a full day without the New York Times. No one covering the tumult in Guangzhou or inside Buckingham Palace or what our president is saying. From midnight to midnight, no reporting, no filing stories, no podcasting, no comment moderating, and definitely no responding to editors’ queries.

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CNN is all that’s left.

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