Nearly 1,300 New York Times employees have vowed to work from home permanently.
The staff have declared that they will not return to the newsroom after the New York Times expected them to be in the workplace for at least three days per week beginning this week.
Members of the New York Times, represented by the union News Guild of New York, have recently demanded wage increases from management.
The New York Post reported on Monday that 1,316 Times journalists, photographers, and editors signed a promise to never return to the workplace.
Tom Coffey, a 25-year editor at the New York Times, told the newspaper, “People are incensed.”
Coffey stated that the choice by management to require employees to return to the office during a period of high inflation forces them to spend more money on petrol, meals, and clothing. In addition, the employees are not receiving a pay increase to offset these increased expenditures.
Nearly 1,300 New York Times employees have vowed to work from home permanently.
Haley Willis, a journalist for the New York Times, tweeted on Monday, “The @nytimes is providing branded lunch boxes to workers as a back-to-work benefit this week.”
Instead, we want respect and a fair contract, so I’m working from home this week alongside 1,300 of my @NYTimesGuild and @NYTGildTech coworkers, with the assistance of @WirecutterUnion.
However, a source told the New York Post that the lunchboxes distributed to New York Times employees were empty. In addition, the lunchbox lacked handles, they said.
A New York Times representative stated that there is no specific number of office days per week that employees are required to be present.
However, they noted, “We continue to feel that a hybrid work environment is now the best fit for the New York Times.”
Coffey told the Post that it is not a must to return to work three days a week. However, they do ‘expect’ you to return to the office three days per week.
The New York Times bargaining committee has given staff a 4% salary increase; however, the News Guild union is demanding an 8% wage increase, a cost-of-living boost of 5.25%, and a permanent work-from-home option.
The last wage increase for New York Times employees will occur in March 2020, just as the epidemic begins.
Coffey stated, “The company’s negotiators are not slow-walking; they are no-walking the pay negotiations.”
According to another source, people are becoming increasingly irritated with the negotiations.
A spokeswoman for The Times told The Post, ‘We respect the right of our Guild colleagues to be heard. We are actively working with the NYT NewsGuild to reach a collective bargaining agreement that financially compensates our journalists for their contributions to the success of The Times, is fiscally responsible as the company remains in a growth phase, and continues to take the industry landscape into account.
We provided the NewsGuild with a proposal for wage rises of ten percent during the remaining two and a half years of the new agreement. This is considerably more than recent Times Guild contract rates. We anticipate making progress toward an accord.’
The staff have declared that they will not return to the workplace after the New York Times expected them to be present for at least three days beginning this week.
As a result of the pandemic, various sectors of the economy are coping with flexible working rules.
The Bank of America revealed last week that over the following six to eight weeks, it will describe its plan for hybrid working that will adapt to changing situations.
As a means of luring employees back to the office, countries worldwide are offering greater incentives, including free meals.
During the COVID-19 epidemic, hybrid working rules were implemented across the industry, but data obtained by Reuters and interviews with banking sector executives revealed that attendance fell short of expectations globally.
And with prices like fuel and food growing rapidly, workers accustomed to pocketing commuting costs have even more reason to stay at home, posing a challenge for businesses to improve the allure of office employment.
Kathryn Wylde, chief executive officer of the Partnership for New York City, told Reuters that employers had done a good amount to make the office more attractive and functional, highlighting amenities such as free dinners and ping pong tables to improve social space.
However, a global survey of over 80,000 employees undertaken by the consulting firm Advanced Workplace Associates (AWA) revealed that employees do not adhere to hybrid working arrangements.
AWA discovered that organizations with rules mandating two, two or three, or three days in the office have attendance rates of 1.1, 1.6, and 2.1 days, respectively.
“When we exited lockdown and constraints were loosened, people attempted to enter the office… Andrew Mawson, managing director of AWA, remarked, “When they arrived, they discovered they were only conducting Zoom calls.”
“The reason people are not moving into offices is because they have become accustomed to a suitable lifestyle and pricing structure,” he explained.
Kelly Beaver, CEO for UK and Ireland at Ipsos, which is ditching its two-days-a-week hybrid strategy in favor of a more flexible approach, noted that senior managers sometimes be among the most persistent about being at home.
‘We find that some of them are less tolerant of minor office annoyances, or they view office travel as an unnecessary hardship… “They are missing out on networking opportunities,” she said.