More than 1,100 unionized New York Times employees strike Thursday. According to the union, the reason is that the company “failed to negotiate in good faith” after setting a contract deadline last week. The limit is until midnight this Friday (9).
This is the first time that US newspaper employees have participated in a walkout since the early 1980s.
The act comes amid a growing labor movement in the United States, in which employees of companies such as Amazon, Starbucks and Apple have organized to fight practices they consider unfair.
“Today we were ready to work as hard as necessary to reach a fair deal, but management left the table with five hours to go,” the NYT union wrote on Twitter on Wednesday (7).
The newspaper issued a statement confirming the strike: “It is disappointing that they are taking such radical action when we have not reached an impasse.”
In the United States, the accumulated inflation in 12 months until October increased by 7.7%. The index reached a peak of 9.1% in June, the biggest increase in the cost of living since November 1981. The levels are much higher than the 2% target for the country’s annual inflation.
In the communications industry, journalists at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, owned by Block Communications, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, owned by McClatchy, are currently on indefinite strikes.
On November 4, more than 200 union journalists from 14 Gannett-owned media outlets – including California’s Desert Sun and New Jersey’s Asbury Park Press – participated in a one-day strike.
In August, about 300 Thomson Reuters journalists in the US, also represented by the New York NewsGuild, went on strike for a 24-hour period while the union negotiated a new three-year contract with the company.
The Times Guild represents journalists as well as ad vendors, comment moderators, news assistants, security guards and staff at The Times Center, the company’s event venue and virtual production studio.
Times technology employees last March voted to unionize and are trying to separately negotiate their first contract.
Translated by Luiz Roberto Gonçalves
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