Journalists at The Athletic Seek to Join New York Times Union

The Athletic is pushing to be recognized as a union shop like journalists at its big brother, The New York Times. 

The Athletic’s more than 200 editorial employees asked to officially join the NewsGuild of New York. The guild, which represents 1,500 Times employees, sent a letter to the Times’ management asking them to recognize the staffers as part of the union. The New York Times acquired The Athletic in 2022 for $550 million.

“Over the past several months, we have organized around the principle of preserving what makes The Athletic great — our staff, our work and our loyal readership,” Athletic investigative reporter Katie Strang said in a statement. “The work we do is union work and we believe we should be afforded the same benefits and protections as the Times Guild members under their current contract.”

The Athletic became the Times’ sole sports hub after the newspaper shuttered its sports department in July 2023, after which all Athletic content has been hosted by the Times’ website. Employees who work on the Times’ product review section, called Wirecutter, are also part of the NewsGuild, as are the paper’s tech workers. The Times disclosed in November that The Athletic had its first profitable quarter since its launch in 2016.

“Today we received and are reviewing a request from U.S.-based colleagues in The Athletic’s newsroom to initiate a process to become members of the NewsGuild of New York,” a spokesperson for The New York Times Company said in a statement to Front Office Sports. 

Rob Rossi, an Athletic senior writer who covers the Penguins and the NHL, told FOS that health care and job protections are among the major factors in the push to unionize. Last year, The New York Times switched health-care providers for Athletic workers without any warning to a pricier plan. Under Times ownership, 20 Athletic employees were laid off in June 2023. 

“We want our equal protections,” said Rossi, who is part of the unionization effort. “We are all in this together. They changed our URLs so our stories are now on the Times’ website. They changed our paychecks that now say The New York Times. They changed everything to The New York Times except that we are not allowed to say we work for The New York Times. They own us. There are 200-plus Athletic people in the United States who are essentially working for The New York Times.”

The roughly 70 employees of the product review website Wirecutter acquired by the Times in 2017 launched its unionization effort soon afterward. A month after a strike during Black Friday in November 2021, the Times agreed to a three-year deal with the Wirecutter Union under the NewsGuild of New York that included pay raises for all Wirecutter employees, a cap on health-care costs, and other guarantees. A new three-year contract was announced in May. 

The more than 600 tech workers at the Times had an even more protracted battle that spanned more than three and a half years. The Times Tech Guild went on strike for eight days during the busy general election period in November before the Times agreed to a tentative deal for a three-year contract with the union. 

“All New York Times employees doing that work deserve the same contractual benefits that we have, including ‘just cause’ protections against unfair terminations, guaranteed salary floors and annual raises, a pension plan, enshrined intellectual property rights, and a seat at the table when decisions are being made about our working terms and conditions,” the Times Guild Unit Council said in a statement Monday. 

Also on Monday, more than 20 of the Athletic’s Canadian-based employees announced their unionization effort, ​​The Athletic United. 

“Given that our work is regularly being used in the print and digital editions of the New York Times, we believe our relationship with the company should reflect that. As employees who fall under the New York Times banner, we believe we should be treated like our colleagues across the company,” ​​The Athletic United said in a statement.