NY Times editorial union slams management for rejecting new membership: ‘They’ve never been good partners’

After editorializing The Athletic, owned by the New York Times announced their desire to join the newsroom union, management informed the Times Guild on Thursday that it would not honor their request.

“The management’s decision is not a surprise, given that The New York Times‘long history of union-busting,” the Times Guild said in reaction to the news. “We filed for an election on the National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] and that process is moving forward. Sports affairs are Times Guild affairs. It’s that simple.”

“Instead of doing the right thing by its workers at the Athletic, Times management continues the charade of pretending to operate separate newsrooms in an attempt to maintain a two-tiered system that disenfranchises workers at the Athletic,” the union said.

The New York Times bought the online sports news edition in 2022, and while management originally said The Athletic’s operations would be separate, they have been integrated into the newsroom, the union explained in a press release.

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Athletic was founded in 2016 as an ad-free, subscription-based sports site that would appeal to die-hard fans of various teams, but ultimately struggled to make money without ads and was looking for a buyer. The New York Times bought it for an estimated $550 million.

Times management closed sports desk of the New York Times in September 2023, and the job was assigned to the Times staff assigned to The Athletic. Now, about 200 editorial staff at The Athletic, which now serves as the New York Times’ de facto sports section, have organized to become part of the Times Guild.

Stacy Cowley, a business reporter for the New York Times and an elected official of the Times Guild, told Fox News Digital that when a reader opens the sports section of the print edition, they will see stories from the Athletic.

“The way management communicated with them built support for unionization and for them to come to the Times Guild,” she said. “We often have a joke that management is our best organizer and that really proved to be true in this case.”

“I think the Athletic staff felt very much the erosion of their independent identity and the growth of being treated as a unit of the New York Times, and that created a real momentum among their staff to say, ‘Well, if we’re New York Times employees doing the work of the New York York Times, then we should be part of the New York Times union and have the benefits and protections of that contract,’ she added.

The NewsGuild of NY has three “bargaining units” or unions at The New York Times, which include The Times Guild with about 1,500 newsroom, business and support staff, the Wirecutter Union made up of about 100 editorial staff, and the Tech Guild, which includes about 700 technical workers .

The News Guild is confident it has a strong case to present to the NLRB, Cowley said. She also criticized board members who told The Athletic they would be good partners in their efforts to unionize.

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They had never been good partners in this, she said. “When they bought The Athletic, the first response was, ‘They’re going to operate completely independently.’ They waited until three weeks after, I think it was three or four weeks right after we closed our deal in 2023, they turned around and closed the sports desk, and we were all very aware of that time.”

“It was a rather pointed move, they didn’t mention it in the contract negotiations, they waited for us to conclude the contract and then they threw the news at us a month later,” she added. “When the editorial staff confronted them about it in a rather heated meeting, their response was, ‘Oh, we had no plans for this.'”

Now, she said, members are left with the possibility that either they honestly made this decision to close the newsroom within weeks without any prior plans to do so, “which is not a good sign of their ability to forecast” or “they lied to us and they knew all along that they were going to do it and they were waiting for us to make a deal to do it.”

“They haven’t built a lot of credibility with their employees about how they communicate with the union,” she added.

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Now they’re waiting to see what the NLRB says, Cowley said. Athletico’s hearing is scheduled for next week.

“The big question mark period is what comes after that, because how long it takes the board to make its decision is very variable,” she said.

Cowley also hit out at the Times editorial board, which has consistently taken very pro-union positions.

“The New York Times is a large public company with a lot of very well-paid executives, and they understand that union contracts transfer some power to workers, and very few companies voluntarily accept that,” she said.

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Published by Athletic David Perpich told the staff on Thursday, he believed the best approach was for the site’s reporters to have a separate bargaining unit within the NewsGuild.

“The Athletic’s newsroom is completely independent from The Times, with separate leadership,” he wrote. “This distinction has allowed us to maintain policies and practices that are specific to the needs of national and local sports coverage, with a workforce across the country. This has allowed us to maintain our unique workplace culture and deliver our signature best in- class journalism for fans.

“Furthermore, The Athletic needs to be an economically viable company that can financially support what has grown into one of the largest newsrooms, with more than 500 journalists. We have made progress towards that ambition, but we still have a long way to go. A separate unit for contracts and negotiations is the best way to maintain the size and strength of our newsroom and achieve further growth.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to The New York Times for comment.