New York Times employees are openly protesting the ongoing contract negotiations with the newspaper's management again.
Poynter reports that members of the Newspaper Guild gathered outside the office's Page One meeting room for ten minutes in a quiet display of dissent on Wednesday afternoon.
On Tuesday, they had received a notice alerting them to the planned protest. The memo alleged that management was trying to "compromise our financial welfare, our access to health care and our security in retirement," and called on senior editors to relay the sentiment.
This latest development comes after hundreds of staffers signed an open letter expressing their "profound dismay" with the company's decisions in December. Guild members had been working without a contract since last March, and the letter expressed outrage over negotiators' calls for "a freeze of our pension plan and an end to our independent health insurance," amongst other things.
The tension appears to be heating up as the New York Times faces continued criticism over former CEO Janet Robinson's extremely generous severance package. Employee unions hammered the paper for paying her $4.5 million. The Times is also struggling to fill the leadership vacuum left by Robinson's departure.
Click over to Poynter for a picture of the proceedings. Below, see the text of the notice from Tuesday.
Please join us at 3:50 p.m. on Wednesday for a quiet, 10-minute display of unity, around the entrances to the Page One meeting room on the third floor.
The point is to show our common dismay over contract negotiations in which management seems determined to seriously compromise our financial welfare, our access to health care and our security in retirement. We hope that senior editors who witness and understand our mutual resolve will convey the gravity of the situation to management.