By Helen Coster
(Reuters) -More than 1,100 union employees at the New York Times Co will walk out for one day on Thursday after failing to negotiate a “complete and equitable contract” with the news publisher, the union said in a statement.
The union, part of the NewsGuild of New York, had pledged the 24-hour walk-out last week if a contract was not reached by Dec. 8. It will mark the first time New York Times employees have participated in a work stoppage since the late 1970s and comes amid a growing labor movement across the United States in which employees from companies such as Amazon, Starbucks Corp and Apple Inc have organized in an effort to push back against what they say are unfair labor practices.
The New York Times issued a statement confirming the strike. “It is disappointing that they are taking such an extreme action when we are not at an impasse,” the company said.
In the media industry, journalists at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, owned by Block Communications Inc, and the McClatchy-owned Fort Worth Star-Telegram are currently on open-ended strikes.
On Nov. 4 over 200 union journalists across 14 Gannett-owned news outlets – including the Desert Sun in California and New Jersey’s Asbury Park Press – participated in a one-day strike.
In August, nearly 300 Thomson Reuters Corp journalists in the United States, also represented by the NewsGuild of New York, staged a 24-hour strike as the union negotiates with the company for a new three-year contract.
(Reporting by Helen Coster in New York, Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles and Akriti Sharma and Bharat Govind Gautam in Bengaluru; Editing by Anna Driver, Sandra Maler and Leslie Adler)
