Never mind Harris vs. Trump. Here is something that could really move the needle on election night—or not.
Because of a staff dispute, New York Times readers may not have its famous election needle to rely on.
Dozens of the Times' Tech Guild—its union that represents software engineers, data scientists, and project managers—picketed the Times‘ Midtown Manhattan offices on Wednesday to protest its more than two-year-long demand for a union contract.
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The threat for the Times is real: Should the union opt to go on strike on its Election Day deadline, as its more than 600 members overwhelmingly voted to authorize last month, it risks upending the Times' election coverage, potentially taking the Grey Lady offline entirely.
A spokesperson for the paper told the Daily Beast that the union “threatening a strike at this time feels both unnecessary and at odds with our mission.”
“It’s really the company that is putting their [and] our reputation and the company that is putting the brand of New York Times at risk,” said Kathy Zhang, a senior manager on the Times' audience team and the chair of the Tech Guild.
The scene outside the Times' building mirrored the one-day walkout its editorial union held in 2022, with red-shirted staffers rebuking the company for the prolonged negotiations. Some staffers held up mocked-up variations of Connections categories and wore variations of Times headlines on their shirts, while others blew into megaphones and dared the company to risk the union’s anger.
“Stress test this!” the workers shouted as they picketed, referencing the simulations the company has done to prepare its systems for election traffic.
The Guild is comprised of about 600 staffers across the business side of the Times, representing those who work on the back-end systems that powers how people access the paper. While that includes making sure their in-house article-writing software Scoop (as famously seen in 2022’s She Said) is working and that readers get their push alerts, some members are also responsible for making sure the paper’s various games (hello, Wordle and Connections), apps, and website work. That includes its famous Election Needle, a model introduced in 2016 that predicts which candidate will win an election.
The unit formed in 2022 and has been trying to secure a contract since July of that year, battling management on everything from return to office policies; just cause protections, which ensures employees must go through a process before a firing and cannot be let go without reason; and a general wage increase of 1 percent, which the unit says is too low.
The process hasn’t been smooth—the unit filed multiple claims with the National Labor Relations Board, including accusing the Times last week of interrogating members over how they felt about a strike, according to Axios. (The Times denied the claims.)
It’s gotten support from the Times' editorial guild, which inked a deal with the paper after more than two years of negotiations and a one-day walkout, and its Wirecutter union, which went on a four-day strike during the 2021 Black Friday season before securing a contract the next month.
“We’re very aware of the constant work that they have to do to tweak things, adjust things, and fix things,” Times business reporter Stacy Crowley told the Daily Beast on the sidelines of Wednesday’s rally. “I have talked to some of the reporters on Election Day coverage working on the needle and other very tech—heavy projects—they don’t think it’s going to go off okay without the Tech Guild on the job."
Should the unit go on strike, multiple members of the guild said, the risk to the Times' platforms could be pronounced if a tech snafu appeared with no one to fix it. Sarah Duncan, a Times software engineer, said outdated news could appear on the Times' website, giving readers a false impression of a close election that could alter the country’s trajectory.
“Every election, something goes wrong,” Duncan said. “It is tech labor that is staying up until 2 a.m.—unpaid extra hours—to fix it. That’s what we’re relying on. That’s what we’ve relied on for years, and all these past elections, is those fixes happening."
There’s precedent for the Times‘ election programs failing in key moments of an election. The needle was taken down for about an hour in the 8 p.m. hour during the 2022 midterms over a coding error that labeled Louisiana Democratic, chief political analyst Nate Cohn wrote on Twitter at the time. The needle returned again by 9:30 p.m., according to The Hill.
But should something else go wrong if the unit goes on strike, project manager Michelle Esposito told the Daily Beast, it won’t be nearly as easy of a fix.
“If there’s nobody to go in and fix it, it just stays broken,” Esposito said. “And so that’s what we’ve warned them about—give us a fair deal so that we can be there to jump in and correct and fix things as needed.”
Zhang, the unit chair, said the company has come to the bargaining table more since September’s strike-authorization vote, but only because the company recognizes the threat of an election night gone awry. If a strike does happen—the metaphorical needle indicating its likelihood is unclear—it will be the Times' fault for any hit to their brand, she said.
“We are really questioning whether The New York Times as an institution values democracy in the way that they have been saying that they do,” Zhang said.
A New York Times Company spokesperson told the Daily Beast: “We look forward to continuing to work with Tech Guild to reach a fair contract, that takes into account that they are already among the highest paid individual contributors in the Company and journalism is our top priority.
“We’re in one of the most consequential periods of coverage for our readers. There is no outlet that provides The Times’s depth of reporting and analysis—something that will be even more essential to our readers and the country if, as in 2020, the election fails to produce a clear result until days or weeks after election day.
We have robust plans in place to ensure that we are able to fulfill our mission and serve our readers.
“The election deadline timing is arbitrary and was a decision made unilaterally by the Tech Guild leadership. While we respect the union’s right to engage in protected actions, threatening a strike at this time, feels both unnecessary and at odds with our mission.”
