Danielle Rhoades Ha, a Times spokesperson, countered that under its proposal the “majority” of guild members would make “50 percent or more in additional earnings over the life of the new contract than they would have if the old contract had continued.” A NewsGuild representative said in response, “The management math is calling a change from 2 to 3 percent a ‘50 percent raise.’ What is clear is this offer amounts to a wage cut given soaring inflation.” The guild’s current proposal would increase wages an average of 5.5 per cent per year over four years, whereas the company’s would increase wages by an average of 2.875 per cent over the same period. “Under management’s proposal, most of us would make far less money, in inflation-adjusted terms, in 2023 than we did in 2020,” a guild representative wrote to members, in a December 7th e-mail. The major sticking point between the Times Guild-which comprises not just journalists but other workers, such as security guards and I.T.

The showing, he said, should put pressure on management to “come to the table with sincere proposals.” “I think they were testing to see if we had the power to pull this off,” Bill Baker, the unit chair of the Times, which is represented by the NewsGuild of New York, said on Thursday, of management. After two years of union negotiations, seventy-seven per cent of the bargaining unit signed on for a walkout-the longest work stoppage since 1978, when Times workers were off the job for eighty-eight days. It has acquired the Athletic, Wordle, and Wirecutter, made expansions to life-style products, such as the Cooking section, and generally benefitted from being the former President Donald Trump’s mainstream-media “enemy.” And yet employee morale at the Times is at a nadir. A little more than a decade ago, the Times had used the building to help pay down its debts after taking out a two-hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar loan to stay afloat today, the company occupies an enviable position in the hard-up world of media. Last Thursday, hundreds of Times employees gathered outside of 620 Eighth Avenue, the newspaper’s headquarters, to take part in a daylong strike.

New york times wirecutter strike