'We'd Rather Have Raises': New York Times' "Cute" Lunchbox Perk Backfires
NDTV
New York Times has offered branded lunchboxes to welcome its employees back to the office.
Hundreds of New York Times Co. employees are working from home this week in defiance of the company's renewed return-to-office push. Here's the lunch box. It's cute! But my colleagues and I don't need cute trinkets. 330 of us wrote emails last month asking for real raises to combat inflation. We have RTO and DEI proposals on the table. What we need is a contract. Let's bargain, @nytimes. pic.twitter.com/0M3ZtawiDl
More than 1,200 people, who are the majority of the journalists and tech workers represented by the NewsGuild of New York, pledged not to return to the office Monday in an effort to get the Times to negotiate over RTO plans, according to the union.
"Health and safety policies are a part of contract negotiations and they have to be bargained over," Times software engineer Carrie Price said in an interview Monday. "Being in charge of our own personal risk assessment is important to our membership...Being asked to give up that ability to be in control of my own personal safety for myself and my loved ones, is something that we don't want and it hasn't been negotiated over."
The journalists have been without a contract since March 2021 and staff haven't gotten raises in more than two years despite decades-high inflation and rent increases. Meanwhile, they say the company has done exceptionally well in recent years and executives are making millions of dollars each year.
