New York Times’ Wirecutter Writers Plan Strike Around Black Friday

(Bloomberg) -- Journalists at the New York Times Co.’s Wirecutter unit plan to strike during the product review website’s peak traffic period around Black Friday, joining a recent wave of threatened work stoppages by U.S. workers.

Over 90% of Wirecutter union members have voted to authorize a work stoppage lasting one or more days in late November, according to the NewsGuild, which represents around 1,300 other editorial and business workers at the Times. Two years ago the union secured recognition at Wirecutter as well. Black Friday is Nov. 26 this year, the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, when retailers count on a huge bump in holiday shopping.

Members plan to protest what they say is the company’s refusal to agree to an initial collective bargaining agreement with significant guaranteed wage increases. They say the company is offering across-the-board raises of only 0.5% per year, with additional pay subject to management’s discretion about who deserves it.

“We look forward to continuing to work towards an agreement with the Wirecutter Union in our standard process at the negotiating table,” Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha said in an email. “Our compensation proposal is more generous than what they’ve described and seeks to maintain a similar compensation structure for Wirecutter employees with programs in place for others at the Times Company.” 

The guild also filed a National Labor Relations Board complaint Monday against the publication’s corporate parent, alleging that management violated federal law by “refusing to provide relevant information requested by the union” related to contract talks. The company declined to comment on the filing, saying it hadn’t seen it yet.

Wirecutter generates revenue for the company via subscriptions, digital ads, and commissions on purchases via affiliate links. The union, which represents around 70 editorial employees, said a strike would deprive the company of sought-after fresh content for at least 24 hours during the busiest week for its site, as customers seek out the brand’s carefully-researched reviews to help them pick their Black Friday and Cyber Monday purchases. 

“We know what we’re worth,” Wirecutter writer Katie Okamoto said. “We feel that it’s appropriate for us to, if we have to, demonstrate how worth it we are.”

The NewsGuild staged a shorter half-day work stoppage in August among some of the New York Times’ technology employees. The union has asked the government to hold a vote on adding them to its ranks. The Times, which has denied allegations by the guild of running an illegal anti-union campaign among those tech workers, accused the union at the time of being “more focused on attention-seeking tactics than in having constructive dialogue” with management.

Wirecutter workers said the guaranteed raises they’ve proposed would better reflect the value they create for the company and also advance the Times’ diversity, equity, and inclusion goals by making jobs there more accessible for people who fully rely on their salary to sustain themselves. 

“Workers in industries of all sorts are recognizing that the last 40 years have seen an enormous shift of the profits of their labor going not to themselves in any meaningful way but to shareholders and management,” Wirecutter bargaining committee member Tim Heffernan said, “and for a lot of reasons are now finally saying no, enough is enough.”

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