The employees union of the New York Occasions has filed a authorized grievance towards the corporate over its resolution to disband the paper’s sports activities part and subcontract its work to non-unionized employees at The Athletic, the subscription-based sports activities web site the Occasions acquired final yr. The grievance, logged Thursday, alleges the corporate violated core rules of the Occasions Guild’s collective bargaining settlement—one solely lately gained after a bitter standoff. “The Occasions Guild has jurisdiction over journalism jobs at The Occasions, but the corporate is claiming it has the appropriate to subcontract to itself and have non-union employees do union work with out the identical job protections, wages and different advantages we now have fought so onerous to safe,” the union stated in a press release, calling the corporate’s claims “preposterous on their face and a brazen try at union-busting.” (The Occasions declined to touch upon the grievance and pointed Self-importance Truthful to final week’s memo.)
The employees union is demanding the corporate “stop and desist from additional violations of the provisions of the settlement” and referred to as for “financial treatments” for any employees which have suffered losses (although the corporate has ensured no employees might be laid off on account of this resolution and stated sports activities employees might be assigned to different desks within the newsroom). The Occasions Guild can be searching for, amongst different issues, “all correspondence, steerage, memoranda, and different written materials promulgated by the corporate regarding the plans to subcontract sure work at present carried out by the Sports activities Desk to The Athletic” and “regarding the means of reassignment.”
Occasions Guild despatched administration a petition with greater than 1,100 signatures of workers and alumni to “demand that Occasions administration cease violating our contract and respect union work.” Writer A.G. Sulzberger has accepted an invite from sports activities desk employees to fulfill with them instantly, in line with a supply aware of the state of affairs. It’s much less about attempting to “get by to him and have him see the folly of his methods,” one Occasions reporter advised me, and extra a continued pursuit for solutions which have been absent from the corporate’s public statements and different feedback on the choice. “Not in any of this stuff is there form of an evidence for why they’re doing this. There’s a ‘We’re allowed to do that,’ which after all the union contests some components of, and broad platitudes about being dedicated to sports activities or attempting to provide readers as sturdy protection as ever.” Sulzberger, the reporter stated, “is form of the one one that may actually reply why that is being accomplished; why that is being accomplished on this approach; why that is good for the Occasions.”
Occasions employees have been demanding an evidence for the corporate’s resolution to shutter the sports activities desk ever since administration abruptly reported the choice final week. Some staffers say they continue to be at midnight about how the newsroom will cowl massive sports activities occasions going ahead. “I work on the information print hub, and quite a lot of what I do is taking the sports activities protection that’s working on-line and serving to to get that prepared for our print version,” says longtime employees editor Tom Coffey. “No person has defined to me how that is going to work after we disband the sports activities division and begin utilizing materials from The Athletic.” Subsequent yr’s Olympic Video games in Paris is prime of thoughts for Coffey. The Occasions, says Coffey, “takes Olympics protection extraordinarily critically, and I do not know the way that’s going to work. I don’t assume anyone’s thought that by.”
As I lately reported, administration invited sports activities employees to a morning assembly final Monday to announce the choice, however a Occasions information alert with the information went out to the world earlier than government editor Joe Kahn had even stated the phrases aloud to the room. Days later, what was purported to be a routine all-company assembly turned contentious when staffers pressed for administration solutions. Kahn admitted on the all-staff assembly that the “choreography” of the announcement was not good. In the course of the assembly, Occasions workers additionally requested about differing requirements and editorial processes between The Athletic and the Occasions, a topic of concern for some Occasions workers. (Deputy Wirecutter and Athletic writer Cliff Levy, a former Occasions masthead member who used to supervise requirements for the Occasions newsroom, stated the “core” requirements and journalistic values of The Athletic are the identical as these of the Occasions.)
The corporate has 20 days to reply to the grievance; if the corporate denies the grievance, the guild can then file for arbitration. Per The Washington Submit, an arbitrator might in the end “rule that Occasions sports activities protection is guild work, which might imply its sports activities protection couldn’t be subcontracted to The Athletic and the Occasions newsroom must produce the Occasions’s sports activities protection.” An arbitrator siding with the Occasions, then again, might set a regarding precedent for the newsroom. As one Occasions staffer advised me final week: “There may be honest concern within the newsroom that if that is left to face, they might do that to any part.”
