AI Monitoring Dispute Heats Up Between New York Times and Tech Workers
About 700 software engineers, designers, product managers, and data analysts represented by the New York Times Tech Guild have filed an unfair labor practice charge against Times management.
The union claims management has refused to provide information on how AI is currently used, future plans for AI, and how it may affect jobs and workflow.
Grievances allege that two internal AI tools—DX and Glean—violate the collective bargaining agreement by tracking and evaluating employee performance and activity.
AI Tools Under Scrutiny
DX is marketed as an engineering productivity tool that tracks output, generative AI use, and efficiency. Initially introduced to measure overall company performance, it has since been used to generate individual benchmarks.
The union says DX metrics have been cited in disciplinary conversations and may constitute a de facto quota.
Glean aggregates internal knowledge bases (wikis, GitHub, Google Docs, emails) for easier search. The union fears it can be used to monitor workers by querying individual contributions. According to the union, the style of recent disciplinary notices suggests they were generated using Glean.
Union Concerns
Ben Harnett, a software engineer and chair of the unit's generative AI committee, states that the metrics flatten work and erase nuance, not correlating with quality or actual feature delivery.
The union believes the use of these tools amounts to deploying surveillance and monitoring technology against workers, violating contract protections around privacy, monitoring, job descriptions, and bargaining obligations.
Company Response
The New York Times did not address specific questions about DX and Glean. Spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha stated the company disagrees with the characterizations and will respond through the normal contractual process.
The Times Guild, representing editorial and other staff, also filed an unfair labor practice charge related to AI information requests.
Broader Context
The Times Guild is bargaining a new contract seeking AI protections, including:
- Human oversight
- Transparent labeling of AI-generated journalism
- Compensation for model training deals
The Times currently uses AI for reporting, such as parsing documents related to Jeffrey Epstein and analyzing satellite images of Gaza. Similar AI-related labor disputes have occurred at ProPublica and McClatchy.
Union Position
Harnett emphasized the unit does not oppose all AI use but insists workers should have a say in deployment.
He noted that metrics tracking AI token usage or frequency create pressure to prioritize quantity over quality.