New York Times: AI at the Center of a Union Struggle

Technology employees at the New York Times, organized within the Tech Guild, accuse management of using artificial intelligence tools to monitor and evaluate their performance, which they claim constitutes a violation of their employment contract. The Tech Guild, a unit of the NewsGuild of New York, consists of about 700 software engineers, designers, product and project managers, and data analysts. They have filed a complaint for unfair labor practices, asserting that the company has refused to provide information regarding the use of AI, its future projects, and the impact on jobs.

Two AI tools, DX and Glean, are at the center of the controversy. DX, initially announced as a means to enhance the developer experience, is being used to track employee productivity. According to Ben Harnett, a software engineer and chair of the union's generative AI committee, the data from DX, which was supposed to measure the company as a whole, is now customized and used in disciplinary contexts. DX statistics have been cited in recent disciplinary conversations, raising concerns within the union.

Glean, another tool, allows for searching internal knowledge bases but raises concerns about its potential for monitoring individual contributions. The Tech Guild stated that the style and format of recent disciplinary notices sent to staff suggest they were generated using Glean. Harnett emphasizes that Glean can generate inaccuracies and lead to unproductive searches.

The Times Guild, which represents 1,500 editorial, advertising sales, and support employees at the Times, has also filed complaints against the Times for refusing to respond to their requests for information about AI. Meanwhile, the Times Guild is negotiating a new contract to strengthen protections against AI, demanding that any use of AI be transparent and supervised by humans. The Times is already using AI tools for certain reporting tasks, such as analyzing documents related to Jeffrey Epstein or reviewing satellite images of Gaza.

The management of the New York Times, through its spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha, has contested the allegations made in the complaints, stating that it would respond as part of the usual contractual process. She clarified that the company would address this Request for Information in due course, as it has done with more than 80 other RFIs from the union in recent years. The Times has not responded to specific questions regarding its use of DX and Glean.

Harnett points out that the unit's position is not that AI should never be used, but that workers should have a say in how it is deployed. Metrics such as the number of tokens an employee uses or how frequently they use AI to perform their work create pressure to do more and incentives that do not align with producing quality work. This situation reflects a broader trend in the media industry, where the use of AI is becoming a major point of friction in union negotiations. Journalists from ProPublica and McClatchy have also expressed similar concerns regarding AI.