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Comment by wesselbindt | Hacker News Reader

> Striking during election week is kind of a crappy move to pull

I couldn't disagree more. The point of a strike is to demonstrate the value of your labor by withholding it. Withholding your labor in a slow week would be counterproductive. Strikes (just like any effective form of protest) are supposed to be inconvenient, so in saying what you said, you're really just expressing you don't like strikes. Having this blow up in election week is a risk the Times knowingly took in not meeting their workers' needs sufficiently, and drawing out the negotiations as long as they have. The guild is doing the right thing.

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Sure, but you are also appealing for public sentiment. So there's a reason why teacher's unions carefully time their strikes so they don't clash with important events like SAT season.

I'm not arguing they need to pick the slowest week, but striking a balance seems pretty reasonable and pretty standard for most other unions.

I'm pretty sure the wider harm of the NYT halting operations for an entire week—which isn't remotely what's happening—would be effectively zero, even during the week of a presidential election. What's the problem?

Teachers and health care workers try to be more careful because a bunch of vulnerable people (children, patients) with little to no say in anything about how their respective institutions run are heavily dependent on them. A single newspaper, even the NYT, isn't comparable.

Exactly, if anything this strike is timed to do the least damage to the general public relative to the amount of impact it has on the business. The election has already been decided, we're just waiting to tally the votes. Most people have already decided if they're going to vote and if so who for.

If they had striked last week or the week before they'd have been accused of election interference. Striking this week hurts the Times because they run the risk of losing traffic from people trying to see results, but it doesn't impact the results at all. It's the best possible time to strike this year.

Hard disagree. The most important part of the election, from a news perspective, will be during/after the count, especially if it looks like Harris will win, or it's exceedingly close. Maybe this wouldn't be the case pre-Trump, when elections were decided relatively quickly, and you could assume a peaceful transfer of power.

What part are you disagreeing with?

The part he clearly didn’t understand

>when elections were decided relatively quickly,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore

I wonder how people who seem to care so much about politics don't spend any time reading about politics beyond rage bait headlines.

The NYT burning to the ground doesn't seem like a bad outcome if it will force people to use wikipedia which still has hyperlinks.

Because most people who “care” about politics like this are radicalized due to their bubble. Add in a fair mix of a lack of civics classes and inexperience with politics and you get very loud people with no idea what’s going on.

Who is harmed and how? Students only have one school and limited options for the SATs. The results draw the most attention, but there are countless reputable sources people can turn to, and little lost by learning the results a bit later.

I would argue it's a great benefit rather than a problem, too.

NYT not publishing sensationalist bullshit? While it's just one outlet out of countless many, the world will be that much more peaceful for but a short while.

I didn't think my original comment needed it, but yes, I actually agree the NYT not publishing might be a net improvement in the world, not just not-harmful.

Sure but the NY times is just one of many news websites and even if it went down, people aren't gonna miss it in the same way as teachers going on strike

The teachers are a little different though. When they go on strike, the most directly affected people are the students, who they aren't negotiating with. Second hand effects are on the parents, who again they aren't negotiating with.

It's only via third hand effects that the other party is actually affected, because the parents have to make the admin's life hard.

So teachers consider that their first duty is to the students. Also they are there to help the students to begin with.

When teachers or doctors or nurses strike regular people, the general public, suffer. In the case of the NYT tech staff nobody suffers except the NYT leadership. Oh no you can't read NYT during election week. Whatever, read something else.

The megacorps' refusal to negotiate or compromise is what caused the problem. They are the villains, not the working people being understaffed, underpaid, and hated on by selfish third parties who don't understand solidarity.

I agree. I’m just pointing out the reason why those other professions need to carefully time their strikes to avoid adversely affecting innocent third parties. In the case of the NYT the only people affected are the leadership so they can time their strike for maximum impact without regard for impact on third parties.

I don't think there will be any impactful election news for at least 48 hours, probably more. People will be nervously grasping for assurances that they can't realistically have and the outlets will be cranking out content to fill that void without actually saying anything. It's pretty much just dark entertainment at this point.

Writing such content would be terrible, sounds like a great time to strike.

There’s not much actual value to society to having stuff like the election needle running, it is just a moment-to-moment description of the processes of counting votes, which have already been cast, so we can “enjoy” the stress of Election Day.

But it is probably a huge click-driver for NYT.

This actually is probably the best possible moment for a strike, in terms of inconveniencing NYT without harming coverage of important events.

When public sector workers like teachers go on strike, the other side of the negotiating table is ultimately elected by the public that’s being inconvenienced. That’s a completely different strategic playing field than a private sector strike.

> Sure, but you are also appealing for public sentiment.

You can't count on public sentiment for anything labor oriented in the US - corporations have owned the narrative for the last 40 years. The reason teachers unions avoid clashing is partially because they care about not effecting the kids as much as possible, and partially because they are already keeling over with states dropping the public school system.

The public aren't the party you're negotiating with. You're negotiating with management.

What the public thinks is not particularly relevant, just like it's not relevant to my relationship with my manager.

The only time public sentiment is relevant from a strike is when the public's representatives can order you back to work. That's a risk for a teacher, or a railworker, but not for a newspaper tech.

Teachers are also paid crap because they continue to work for starvation wages. They should strike more because they will not receive more compensation with gentle pleas that are convenient.

I just checked and in my school district the lowest paid (full time) teacher made ~$100k in 2022 (the highest paid made $180k). I would hardly call that "starvation wages".

That is so outside the norm. Average in the US is about $71k and varies WILDLY from state to state, school to school, district to district, and importantly, that variation is one of the huge problems in the first place.

You get that $70k in the big city school where those dollars do not go very far, while out in the boonies where a shitload of teaching is done, you make far, far, far less.

Is 70k considered a starvation wage nowadays? I think I need to look up the definition because this seems far above minimum wage. Most people I know make under 40k per year and they aren't starving...

The problem is housing and costs that are rising as if everyone is making $300k in many places. It doesn’t keep up with costs at all. But if you live in an LCOL, it could be very respectable.

oh I see, thanks for clarifying. Comparable to e.g. downtown baristas who can't afford rent in the city they work in. Still mind boggling that even 70k is insufficient to afford housing.

LCOL = low cost of living for anyone else who may need to look it up.

$70k isn't a lot of money when everyone else is making $200k.

You would have this problem in any area where there is a lot money sloshing around, e.g. most cities in Switzerland. Unless you have some sort of rent control/social housing, or a lot of surplus market to satisfy a wide variety of demand, those people with money are going to simply outbid you.

Teachers make a fair salary. It’s a degreed position with ~100 days PTO annually, so when you account for that the benefits actually outweigh most degreed positions. One could argue the ceiling is closer, particularly for primary education, but that’s a problem of govt funding more than anything.

>It’s a degreed position with ~100 days PTO annually

They do not get 100 days of PTO. They get an hour per work week of PTO and a mandatory 2 month leave. You can't do anything with that leave because there is no simultaneous need for more workers for those two months in any other industry, so you are basically furloughed.

Keep in mind, the states that aren't killing education generally require serious credentials, like a 4 year degree, to make on average $70k a year.

This also completely ignores the mountains of unpaid work teachers do. Every single hour of homework they have to give out to ensure kids get the practice they need to internalize a lesson is at least an hour of grading work, and that's for the easy stuff like fill in the bubble tests that you can literally automate.

My mother regularly spent until 7pm working her teaching job, because that is what is required to be a good teacher.

Isn’t the whole point of a strike to withhold value?

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