More than a thousand New York Times employees are refusing a company order to return to the office at least three days a week, citing inflationary pressures.
Tom Coffey, who sits on the Times‘s union’s contract committee told the New York Post that “people are livid,” and said the 1,300 staffers who are refusing to return to the office are especially concerned with commuter costs.
Haley Willis, who works on video investigations for the paper, tweeted on Monday that “the @nytimes is giving employees branded lunch boxes this week as a return-to-office perk. We want respect and a fair contract instead — so I’m working from home this week along with 1,300 of my @NYTimesGuild and @NYTGuildTech colleagues, with support from @WirecutterUnion.”
The Guild is reportedly demanding an eight percent across-the-board pay hike in addition to continued remote-work option, while the Times is offering a four percent increase and asking that employees abide by the offered hybrid option.
A Times spokesman told the Post that management “continue[s] to believe that a hybrid work environment best suits the New York Times at this moment.”
Last month, the New York Times Guild accused management of discriminating against non-white employees in performance evaluations after releasing a report that concluded that the difference in “the disparities” in evaluations for white and non-white employees “were statistically significant in every year for which the company provided data.”
In 2020, no black employees received the highest possible score, while in 2021 “being Hispanic reduced the odds of receiving a high performance evaluation score by 61 percent, being Black reduced the odds by 47 percent, and being Asian reduced them by 34 percent.”
A Times spokesman told National Review at the time that “having an equitable performance evaluation system is one of the most important levers we have to ensure we are developing and supporting the growth of our people in a fair manner. We’re committed to a performance evaluation system that is fair and equitable, and we have been working to continuously improve it.”
Reporting from National Review.
