Leaked messages reveal New York Times' aggressive anti-union strategy

[tenderfoot]

Internal documents and Slack messages obtained by the Guardian reveal senior executives at the New York Times are heavily leaning on workers to vote no in a union election for more than 600 tech employees.

Meredith Kopit Levien, the chief executive of the New York Times Company, wrote a memo on 19 January circulated to staff titled “Why a Tech Union Isn’t Right for Us” on the tech workers’ union election at XFun, the group within the New York Times responsible for product development operations.

“In short, we don’t believe unionizing in XFun is the right move. But that’s not because I’m anti-union,” said Kopit Levien.

:snip:

In Slack messages, Times chief product officer Alexandra Hardiman and chief growth officer Hannah Yang posted messages urging workers to vote no in the union election. Yang reshared Kopit Leviten’s letter to workers, prompting workers to see it on the company’s internal election resources hub.

“A union is not a silver bullet,” wrote Hardiman, urging workers to vote no. “It will introduce another layer into our process that we believe will make it harder to work – and achieve – together.”

Yang argued that a union would “dilute” the voice of smaller teams within the group of workers. “If you have any concerns about how your voice will be represented in negotiations, we urge you to vote no for the union,” she said.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/feb/01/leaked-messages-new-york-times-anti-union-strategy

[Phoenix61]

1. It's just a coincidence they bash a

pro-union president non-stop. Right? Of course it is.

[BlueIdaho]

2. WTF happened to the NYT?

They seem to another sellout to the right wing media stream.

[tenderfoot]

3. They've always been like that.

eom

[Bev54]

4. You know how to keep unions out? Treat your employees with dignity and compensate

them as they should be. Provide all the necessities in room for advancement, pensions and good health care etc. If they treat their employees good, they will no longer see the need for a union. As a Canadian, who worked for a bank, we had the unions wanting us to join and a few branches did but later left. It was because the banks provided us with good benefits that the reason for a union was never there. They are still non union but considered good employers.