Years of contract battles at media companies reached their peak in 2024. Unions from The New York Times, NBC and Forbes warned leadership of their intentions during critical events for the company in recent months.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the biggest moments:
The New York Times Tech Guild
The New York TimesThe ability to report on Election Day and provide analysis was at risk this year’s election week as hundreds of disgruntled tech employees at the giant newspaper went on strike to protest its ongoing conflict with management, citing “unfair labor practices.”
Starts November 4thThe day before the 2024 election, the New York Times Tech Guild announced a strike that lasted a week. The tech guild voted to unionize in March 2022 and has been in negotiations with leadership for over two and a half years to secure a contract.
The New York Times Tech Guild went on strike this year over “unfair labor practices.” (Fox News Digital)
The Tech Guild’s 600 members are responsible for the back-end systems that support the newspaper’s extensive digital operations, working across engineering, product, design, data and the project management office.
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During election week, red-clad Times staffers marched and chanted outside the paper’s office in midtown Manhattan with “Scabby,” the giant inflatable rat symbolizing labor strife in New York City, perched in front of 620 Eighth Avenue.
“We’re not joking, we’re not playing,” a guild leader told the crowd on Nov. 4.
A spokesperson for the New York Times Company previously said this Fox News Digital that the newspaper was “disappointed” with the timing of the strike.
New York Times Tech Workers Strike (Fox News)
At stake was the Times’ famous “Election Pin,” which would indicate the likelihood of a Trump or Harris win. While the needle eventually made it to the NYT website, albeit a little later in the night than in previous years, no needles at the state or non-presidential level were active on election night.
Additionally, due to the strike, IOS News temporarily stopped running ads, resulting in a significant loss of revenue for the company, its apps and website were slow to load, and publishing problems resulted in error messages for readers of articles and updates, as well as Times subscribers According to the NYT Tech Guild announcement, the company has received hundreds of thousands of emails with broken links.
However, according to a statement to Fox News Digital, a Times spokesperson called the paper’s election week coverage “by far the smoothest website performance during an election ever.”
After a week of strike, New York Times tech workers went on strike returned to work without contract. But, on December 11thThe NewsGuild of New York, which represents the Times Tech Guild, agreed to a three-year contract following the union’s week-long strike in November.
Members of the New York Times news department expressed solidarity with tech workers striking on Election Day 2024. (Fox News Digital)
NBC Digital Union
NBC’s digital staff have also taken action this year in an effort to get a contract for their newly formed media union. On the evening of November 21, the group projected scathing messages onto 30 Rock, criticizing management for delaying a deal.
NBC Digital NewsGuild, a collective bargaining arm of the NewsGuild of New York, made the call NBC News Executives for alleged “unlawful conduct” by setting fire to “breaking news” messages at the company’s flagship building in midtown Manhattan.
The NBC Digital NewsGuild, which represents NBC News Digital reporters, editors, designers, video journalists, animators, social media strategists and editors, has been negotiating its first contract since the group unionized in 2019.
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The forecasts specifically targeted NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde, as well as NBC News Editor-in-Chief Rebecca Blumenstein, Executive Vice President of Programming Janelle Rodriguez, Executive Vice President of News Catherine Kim and Executive Vice President Libby Leist TODAY and Lifestyle, for their tactical engagement, say they violated labor laws, including firing more than 20 union journalists without negotiations and retaliating against union members for participating in protected Activities.
“Cesar Conde and his leadership team have a bad habit of breaking the law,” said Tate James, video editor and union leader, in a statement to Fox News Digital. “But now he’s dealing with a newsroom full of journalists who are tired of working without contracts and chasing their bosses to court. NBC News executives are obsessed with shareholder value, but they don’t respect the workers who create it. We deserve a fair contract first and foremost, and we won’t give in to this fight until we get one.
In addition, in 2021 the National Industrial Relations Committee found that NBC had improperly withheld more than $350,000 in pay raises from union journalists, according to a press release shared with Fox News Digital. The union has not reached an agreement with the union management.
Forbes Union
The Forbes Union, also founded in recent years gave up the job on December 3, 2024, a pivotal day for the company.
The union representing the magazine’s editorial team issued a warning to management and planned its strike on the same day as the publication of Forbes’ well-known “30 Under 30” list, which contains 20 lists of 30 influential people under the age of 30 People recognized for their achievements in various industries.
This was announced by union members who said they would fight for fair wages and cuts in forced labor and severance pay protections Fox News Digital that management has been stalling at the negotiating table for almost three years.
The Forbes Union called on the company to stop “illegally and unilaterally” removing people from the bargaining unit.
A Forbes Union spokesperson told Fox News Digital that management falsely claimed that some of Forbes Union’s members were “management” and therefore should not be part of the union. The union said the tactic was a common anti-union practice that it is fighting with allegations of unfair labor practices because management misclassified members to shrink Forbes Union.
Three-day Forbes Union strike in January 2024 (Forbes Union)
Union members spoke to Fox News Digital about the timing of the strike, which coincided with the release of the company’s “30 Under 30” list to highlight the work involved in publishing the lists.
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“The under 30 list is a really high-profile list for Forbes. It gets us a lot of attention,” said Andrea Murphy, section director and statistics editor at Forbes. “But it takes the work of virtually every single team in the newsroom, months of work, to put together a list like this.”
“The scope is enormous,” she added. “There’s not really a part of the newsroom that isn’t involved in this, and so we felt like the walkout that day kind of shows how much work it takes to do journalism at this level day in and day out. We basically want to take advantage of some of the attention and spotlight that this list receives every year and throw a little bit of it at our contract fight.”
Three-day Forbes Union strike in January 2024 (Forbes Union)
Murphy said management was hesitant and suspected it was a tactic by companies to dampen enthusiasm for a union by “slowly moving forward” on the contract fight.
“Of course they don’t tell us that when we sit at the negotiating table,” she added. “They claim they did this in good faith all along.”
The union has not reached an agreement with Forbes management.
Fox News Digital’s David Rutz, Brian Flood and Nik Lanum contributed to this report.
