The strike against The New York Times by the Times Tech Guild, which began Nov. 4, is the latest in a century’s worth of sporadic labor troubles between the newspaper and the unions representing its workers.
Issues in the strike include job security, pay raises and return-to-office mandates. Software developers and data analysts are among nearly 700 employees in the Times Tech Guild, a unit of the NewsGuild of New York.
At the deadline for “In Times Past” on Friday evening, the strike was ongoing.
In December 2022, over 1,100 members of The Times Guild — another unit of the NewsGuild of New York that includes reporters and editors — staged a one-day strike after negotiations with The Times over their contract renewal stalled. (They reached a deal in May 2023.)
It was 101 years ago that the first significant labor action occurred against The Times, when the pressmen’s union — responsible for the tough, ink-stained work of running the presses — struck The Times and other daily newspapers. For eight days, The Times and the others published special combined issues, using workers who were not in the New York local or not in the pressmen’s union at all.
In 1962, Local 6 of the International Typographical Union — the printers who set type and laid out the page forms from which printing plates were made — struck The Times and other papers. The Times had a Western Edition, composed and printed in Los Angeles, that was unaffected. A few copies of the California paper were flown back to New York each day. But they were scarce. New York was effectively without a New York Times for 114 days.
The Museum at The Times focuses on an 88-day strike begun in 1978 by Local 2 of the Printing Pressmen’s Union over cost-cutting measures at The Daily News, The New York Post and The Times. Members of the Newspaper Guild (a predecessor of the NewsGuild), briefly struck during the waning hours of the multi-union action. The picket-line placard on display in the museum was printed with the words “Newspaper Guild of New York on Strike Against.” The bottom was left blank, allowing organizers to paste on “The News,” “The Post” or “The Times.”
Though not as disastrous as the 1962-63 stoppage, the 1978 strike did last long enough for The Times to miss an entire papal reign. John Paul I was elected pope on Aug. 26 and died Sept. 28 — all while The Times was shut down.
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