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Melissa Harris-Perry: It's The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.

[people protesting]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Last Thursday, more than 1,100 New York Times journalists and other staff members walked off the job in a historic 24-hour work stoppage. Times management and The New York Times Guild have been in contract negotiations for nearly two years. The Guild announced the walkout "due to the company's failure to bargain in good faith."

Now, Guild demands include better compensation, pension, and healthcare benefits. Here's what one striking New York Times worker told Voice of America while walking the picket line.

New York Times Worker: We are asking for really reasonable things like raising our minimum salary floor to a living wage, having raises that keep up with inflation. We told the company that we would walk out today if we didn't have a contract. They left the table last night at 6:30 PM. Here we are, we're walking out.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times Magazine, Nikole Hannah-Jones, spoke outside The Times building during the walkout.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: I love my job, but we shouldn't have to struggle financially to work at a place like The New York Times, no matter what position we hold at the-- [inaudible 00:01:24].

[cheers]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Striking Guild members included reporters, photographers and editors, and security workers, news assistants, and IT specialists. Dozens of freelancers for The New York Times and organizers with the Freelance Solidarity Project also joined the one-day walkout in solidarity.

Ahead of the walkout, Guild members asked readers not to cross the digital picket line to get their news from other sources and to take a break from Times games like the Crossword and Wordle. Notably, they apologized to readers, writing, "This is not a decision we take lightly. We know that you count on us for vital news and information."

This last moment is kind of an expression of that inherent tension for mission-driven public-facing creative workers. Work stoppages may, in fact, be necessary to ensure management is accountable to workers. These workers still feel the pressure, the mission, the drive to be accountable to the public to whom they report.

With me is Alex Press, labor reporter and staff writer at Jacobin Magazine. Alex, welcome to The Takeaway.

Alex Press: Hey, Melissa, thanks so much for having me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm also joined by Natasha Lennard, who's a columnist at The Intercept and an adjunct faculty member at The New School in New York. Welcome to The Takeaway, Natasha.

Natasha Lennard: Thanks for having me. Hi.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, Alex, I want to begin with you. We know that Jacobin, where you work, is also organized through the NewsGuild like New York Times. What are some of the working conditions that are at issue here in The Times walkout?

Alex Press: Yes, as that person in the clip said, a key point of dispute here is really money, wages. As you noted, it's not just high-profile journalists who were on strike at The New York Times on last Thursday, it's also IT specialists, it's security guards.

Right now, The New York Times has a floor for salaries at $52,000. People in the bargaining unit say that's not a livable wage. They want $65,000 as a minimum. There are other issues as well, but those are the key parts where there's distance right now. The New York Times is not proposing raises that fit that adequate level of a salary floor nor raises per year that keep up with inflation.

Those are the key issues. What's worth noting here is that The New York Times is a rare success story right now in US media. I think a lot of listeners probably know that a lot of publications are regularly having layoffs, that ads are down, private equity and tech companies have made the news industry one that is in dire straits.

The New York Times not so much. It has made big purchases recently of The Athletic, Wordle as many people are probably familiar with, and it has higher operating profits this year expected than when the last contract was negotiated. It's also approved $150 million in stock buybacks to investors.

Top management, they keep getting big raises compared to the likes of the security guards at The New York Times, who, of course, people would not be surprised to know, often really do deal with violence threats, people coming into the building, trying to speak to journalists and whatnot. These are really important workers for the operations of The Times. That's really at issue and what led to the first real walkout in several decades at The New York Times.

Melissa Harris-Perry: In 40 years, it's not entirely unprecedented, but it is certainly unprecedented in what we would think of as this contemporary era. Natasha, I suppose as Alex was just saying about folks understand, perhaps, that the news business overall, particularly print, has had some real challenges, local papers shuttering. I think it is surprising for folks to think of The New York Times as a place that is anything other than top-of-the-heap, well-paid, well-compensated employees.

Natasha Lennard: Absolutely. I think often when it comes to flagship news institutions and media institutions like The Times, when people who aren't themselves involved in the industry intimately think of these institutions, they do think of perhaps the highest-paid writers and editors who, in many cases in management, are earning very well.

Of course, these are vast institutions from copyeditors to, as Alex noted, IT workers and security guards. It's so crucial, and it's so heartening to see like something with the walkout last week when all these different types of workers are considering themselves as part of a holistic unit that needs to be recognized as interdependent because people aren't earning a living wage.

It recalls also that August institution, The New Yorker and the union organizing that they've been engaged in, workers there have been engaged in in recent years. I might get the exact wording wrong, but their slogan was something along the lines of "you can't pay the rent with prestige". People without any health insurance living in New York City, barely earning around what would be minimum wage, but are considered to be within prestigious institution and industry.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Alex, on this question of you can't eat prestige, or as my Z-gener daughter might say, "Clouting ain't going to pay the rent." That notion of clout is one piece, but the other part of it is, at least in my experience, folks who work in media really at every level from support systems to the journalists and reporters are very mission-driven and perceive ourselves as critically involved and engaged with the public.

I was so struck by this apology to the public. It does feel like in some ways being this kind of worker as opposed to someone who is creating a product can actually make this workshop stoppage harder because you do feel that sense of, "Well, wait a minute, though, there are important things happening in the world that our readers want to hear from us on."

Alex Press: Definitely. That's definitely the case, and I think, historically, has often been a way to tamp down worker complaints or concerns on the part of management. They'll say, "Aren't you lucky to be doing something meaningful? Shouldn't you be grateful?" Often they don't have to say that. The workers do feel grateful and do feel like this is about much more than that, many would be selfish to make everything about themselves. Even if the reality as these workers are pointing out at The New York Times is to do that work requires a baseline that these companies often are not capable of delivering anymore without pressure.

These jobs need to be stable, people need to be able to have housing that's stable, the more jobs they take on the less time they can spend at their primary one that maybe is doing a public good.

This dynamic can be flipped where these workers become stewards of that public good, in fact, and show that management can't be the one that everyone is entrusting with the smooth operations of the institution. It really brings to mind the workers who I think have the most pressure when they go on strike, say, especially during the pandemic in these recent years, which is nurses.

We've seen a significant number of nurses go on strike during the pandemic. Of course, you can imagine the pressure they're under. It's not hard for the management or the public to say, "You're abandoning patients in a time of crisis," but nurses again and again when they take part in those strikes, their message is very clear, we need to do this for the sake of patient care. It is, in fact, in the public good that these problems are addressed, and we are the only ones who can force management to address them.

We see it with teachers too. When teachers strike, it's they're inconveniencing parents, parents have to find healthcare or childcare or stay home, and yet teachers will say, "All teaching conditions are students learning conditions, and this needs to be addressed for everyone's sake." Journalists, higher education workers like Natasha who just went on strike, all of them often will flip this dynamic in that way and you'll see it in their messaging. Yes, it makes it harder but it's why it's so important to address them now rather than let the problems linger.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Natasha, let me let you weigh in on that.

Natasha Lennard: I would completely echo and back up what Alex just said. I think another crucial point, too, and this applies to specifically higher education and the media journalism publishing, the industries that do a highly competitive prestigious in that way and nonetheless truly struggling in the current economic conditions. What people also need to think about if they want these services to be robust, to be inclusive, to be a public good, we have to be thinking about who's behind them, who are making up these workforces, who are the writers, who are the educators.

If the working conditions and the pay and the job security and the healthcare benefits are so appalling, you are only ever going to have people going into these professions who are already independently wealthy, who come from family money. I think that creates a much worse public good, a much worse education far less intellectually explorative, or far less powerful educational sphere, media sphere.

The wrong stories get told. It becomes very myopic. If we want to think about actually having a stronger, more powerful public service media and education system, you don't just want people who can afford to do it without good pay from the institutions.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That point about it actually affects who ends up at the table was precisely right why interns also pressed for pay. This idea that an internship, again, that notion of prestige was going exclusively to those whose families could support them over the course of a summer, for example. Then that was having real effects on the voices.

Stick with us, everybody. We're going to continue our conversation, our big Monday labor conversation, and up next we're continuing with our guests, Alex and Natasha, but we're checking in on the growing efforts to create more fair labor conditions in higher education. It's The Takeaway.

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We've been talking about labor organizing in media in the wake of The New York Times work stoppage late last week. Still with me are columnist Natasha Lennard and reporter Alex Press. Natasha Lennard is also a part-time faculty member at the New School in New York City. She and her colleagues are represented by the United Auto Workers Local 7902.

Since November 16th nearly 1,800 adjunct faculty members have been on strike for better pay and working conditions. On Saturday, they agreed to end the strike after reaching an initial agreement for contractual pay increases over the next several years.

On the other side of the country, after a full month of striking, post-doctoral employees and researchers in the University of California system are returning to work today after ratifying new terms which include paid family leave and higher pay. More than 36,000 graduate teaching assistants in the UCal system remain on strike even as the academic quarters and semesters draw to a close.

Natasha, I do want to come back to you on this because I understand, again, that you are part of the unionized part-time faculty members who was on strike. How are you feeling about the agreement reached this weekend?

Natasha Lennard: Relieved. Highly, highly relieved and it's been an extraordinary experience being part of a striking unit which also saw a huge amount of solidarity from full-time faculty. The part-time faculty at the new school is unusually 87% of the teaching staff, so it really was a whole university-wide strike shutting down the entire institution for 25 days.

That is after seven months of negotiations over this new contract which is, just want to know, the longest adjunct strike in US history and we won and I think serious, serious gains were made. I'm feeling very much like strikes work and I want to spread that message today for sure.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Look, on this point of strikes working, I know that the New School was also having counter pressures the other direction that there were parents threatening a lawsuit. We know that undergraduate students are both indicating their support for those on strike but also are in a bit of upheaval as their semester ends.

Alex, part of why I want to talk about here is if we connect this adjunct professors, 87% at the New School, growing percentages across the country of what we think of as contingent faculty who don't have the same salary beneficial protection, for example, of tenure, but there's a version of that in media as well with freelancers, right?

Alex Press: Yes, definitely. Both of those things, I think in higher education, maybe in the United States, we see it in the most extreme version of the graduate apprenticeship model. Then adjuncting often was seen or pitched to people entering that field as this is a bargain you're agreeing to, where you're going to accept low wages and instability but you know that down the line there's going to be a stable job for you.

Often, this was the case with freelancing as well and media. You'll freelance, you'll struggle, but you'll get eventually enough by-lines that you'll land a prestigious or at least stable media job. That bargain no longer holds. It's been undermined.

These workers, I think, in both cases say why should we accept the terms of not complaining about this and taking what we can get when we're no longer getting our end of it. I think with freelancing and media staff jobs that shun is very real. Today's staff writer is tomorrow's freelancer.

I think the solidarity we saw between the freelancers for The New York Times and the staff employees makes a lot of sense. Everybody is starting to see one another as subject to the same degradations as well as in fact overlapping categories.

Very few people who even have those stable jobs really believe that they're going to have them for life or at least for decades. That does create a different type of organizing that rather than freelancers being used to break a strike to keep a publication in pieces, as we might say, full of material to publish. Now not so much. The freelancers understand that there's a reason to really build ties with the staff employees.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Natasha, I am wondering about the ways that the pandemic also affected all of this. Again, when we think about that mission and driven work, both folks who were teaching in the academy during the height of the pandemic who were figuring it out and often using a lot of their own resources in their own home spaces to ensure that classes were meeting and students were being taught and had opportunities and journalists who sometimes were risking their lives to report, again, long before there was a vaccine. It does feel, in part, like perhaps this labor moment emerges from the sacrifices that these intellectual so-called workers made during the height of the pandemic.

Natasha Lennard: I think it's feasible. I think a lot of solidarity surprisingly enough was built in that very atomized and terrifying moment. I do want to add that certainly at least in my experience, I'm not a school teacher. I'm a higher education teacher. Being able to work from my home on Zoom took a lot of work, but no, I was not put in the same risky positions as an Amazon warehouse worker or a nurse during the pandemic.

I wouldn't want to pretend those situations were in any way equal even if we all have to think of ourselves in relation to capital and the demands that it makes of us. I wouldn't say that we were tried to that extent, but no, there were definitely sacrifices and connectivity around the ways in which we realize we are all workers and things will be demanded of us regardless of the state of our institutions and that they won't take care of us unless we band together and take care of ourselves and demand from management that we have at least reasonable working conditions.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Alex Press is staff journalist covering labor at Jacobin Magazine and Natasha Lennard is a columnist for The Intercept and part-time faculty member at the New School. Alex, Natasha, thank you both for joining us.

Alex Press: Thank you so much.

Natasha Lennard: Thanks so much for having us.

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