Journalists working for The Athletic have called on The New York Times to recognize their efforts to unionize the newsroom and launch a new labor fight with management.
The Times will disband its long-reported sports division in September 2023, replacing it with coverage from The Athletic, a digital sports news website it acquired in January 2022 for $550 million in cash.
On Monday, The Athletic's organizing committee representing 200 non-union members sent an email to Times publisher AG Sulzberger and CEO Meredith Kopit-Levian, calling the News Guild of News. urged voluntary acceptance into the Times Guild, which is part of the News Guild. yoke.
“We are proud of everything The Athletic and The New York Times as a whole have accomplished since our acquisition in 2022, and we know that joining the Times Guild will only further strengthen our efforts. “I know,” the email said.
“We call on the company to recognize what has been true since we began publishing The Athletic stories under the New York Times banner. We are a newsroom, and The Athletic… colleagues are members of the Times Guild.
news guild warned the woman in gray Failure to grant athletic employees' requests to join the Times Guild will result in the union “pursuing other legal avenues.”
New York News Guild President Susan DeCarava said the union “does not support a two-tier system that disenfranchises workers and weakens union members, nor does it accept management's pretense that The Athletic is a separate organization.” No,” he said.
Times Guild spokeswoman Jen Sheehan told the Post that Athletic staff are not given the same benefits as their unionized colleagues.
“We know anecdotally that they earn much less than Times Guild members,” Sheehan told the Post.
She added that health insurance for athletes is “not as robust or stable as it is today.” [the] Times Guild members operate under this agreement.
Sheehan also said athletic staff will be evaluated based on “website metrics.”
“It doesn’t matter to other news people,” she said. “That's an important difference.”
Times spokeswoman Jordan Cohen confirmed to the Post that the paper had received the request and was considering it.
The letter from The Athletic staff comes after the union representing more than 600 tech employees at the newspaper suspended work for a week just before Election Day after negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement stalled. It belongs to
Last month, the two sides reached a tentative agreement that calls for wage increases of up to 8.25% over the life of the contract, as well as “just cause” protection against termination and other benefits.
Management said the strike, which coincided with the presidential election, did not cause any significant disruption to the paper's coverage of the Nov. 5 campaign.
The New York Times Co.'s stock was trading slightly above 0.6% as of midday Monday. The stock price was approximately $53.20. The stock price has increased more than 12% in the past 12 months.
