Software engineers and product designers at The New York Times have voted overwhelmingly to unionize, creating a large union of tech workers at the paper of record and extending labor’s winning streak in media.
A ballot count by the National Labor Relations Board on Thursday showed 404 workers supported forming a union while 88 opposed it. The tally still needs to be certified by the labor board to become official.
Members of the union campaign took to Twitter following the vote count and called it a “historic win,” saying they “stand in solidarity with all workers organizing to build better workplaces in the tech and media industries.”
The employees will be represented by the NewsGuild-CWA, the same union that includes reporters, editors and other journalists in The New York Times newsroom.
Even though the Times’ newsroom has been unionized for the better part of a century, the company resisted a union for workers on the tech side of the business. Management argued that a union would disrupt the company’s work and urged employees to vote “no,” calling it “an unproven experiment with permanent consequences,” according to the Guardian.
As a liberal newspaper, the Times drew criticism for refusing to voluntarily recognize the union after a majority of workers said they wanted to form one, instead opting to force an NLRB-supervised vote. The company sought to have the election stopped through the labor board, arguing that the proposed bargaining unit was not proper. The paper’s effort failed.
“The Times’ resistance to the campaign underscored an age-old stance from tech employers: that a union is okay for certain workers, but not for those in tech.”
The union eventually filed unfair labor practice charges against the company, accusing management of interfering with the organizing campaign and trying to silence workers who supported it. The company denied the allegations but officials at the labor board found merit in them.
Considering its long history as a unionized company, the Times’ resistance to the campaign underscored an age-old stance from tech employers: that a union might make sense for certain workers, but not for tech workers, who are somehow unique and shouldn’t bargain collectively.
Despite such attitudes, the tech industry has seen a number of high-profile organizing efforts in recent years, including the Alphabet Workers Union at Google in Silicon Valley.
The NewsGuild said the new unionized group at the Times, numbering around 600, appears to be the largest bargaining unit of tech workers in the country.
The election win on Thursday will add more members to a union that’s been growing its footprint inside the Times. Workers at the newspaper’s product review site, Wirecutter, unionized in 2019. They settled on a first contract with the company late last year after going on strike over Thanksgiving weekend.