After the editorial staff of The Athletic, owned by the New York Times they announced their desire to join the newspaper’s newsroom union, management informed the Times Guild on Thursday that they would not comply with their request.

“The management’s decision is not a surprise, considering The New York Times“Long history of union busting,” said the Times Guild in response to the news. “We filed an election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and that process is moving forward. Sports jobs are Times Guild jobs. It’s that simple.”

“Instead of doing the right thing for its Athletic workers, Times management continues the farce of pretending to operate separate newsrooms in an attempt to maintain a two-tier system that disenfranchises The Athletic workers” , the union said.

The New York Times acquired the online sports news channel in 2022, and while management initially stated that The Athletic’s operations would be separate, they were integrated into the newsroom, the union explained in a statement.

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The New York Times building is seen in Manhattan, New York, USA on August 3, 2020.

The Athletic was founded in 2016 as an ad-free, subscription-based sports site that would appeal to die-hard fans of multiple teams, but ultimately struggled to turn an ad-free profit and sought a buyer. The New York Times acquired it for $550 million.

Time management closed The New York Times sports desk in September 2023 and the job was assigned to Times staff assigned to The Athletic. Now, about 200 members of the editorial staff of The Athletic, which now serves as the de facto sports section of the New York Times, have organized to become part of the Times Guild.

Stacy Cowley, a business reporter for the New York Times and an elected officer of the Times Guild, told Fox News Digital that when a reader opens the print sports section, they will see athletics stories.

“The way management has interacted with them has generated support for unionization and for them to come to the Times Guild,” he said. “We often have a joke that management is our best organizer and that proved to be true in this case.”

“I think the staff at The Athletic felt a lot about the erosion of their independent identity and the growth of being treated as a New York Times unit and that created a real momentum among their staff to say, ‘Well, if we are New York Times employees working at the New York Times, we should be part of the New York Times Union Guild and have the benefits and protections of that contract,” he added.

The NewsGuild of New York has three “bargaining units” or unions at The New York Times, including The Times Guild with nearly 1,500 newsroom, business and support staff, the Wirecutter Union of about 100 editorial staff, and the Tech Guild , which includes about 700 technology workers.

The news guild is confident it has a strong case to present to the NLRB, Cowley said. He also criticized members of management who told The Athletic they would be good partners in his efforts to unionize.

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New York Times office in Midtown Manhattan (iStock/iStock)

“They’ve never been good partners in this,” he said. “When they bought The Athletic, the initial response was, ‘They’re going to operate completely independently.’ They waited until three weeks later, I think it was three or four weeks right after we closed our 2023 contract, they turned around and they closed the sports table, and we were all very aware of that moment.”

“It was a fairly one-off move, they didn’t bring it up in the contract negotiations, they waited until we closed the contract and then dropped the news on us a month later,” he added. “When staff members confronted them about it in a rather heated meeting, their response was, ‘Oh, we had no plans to do that.’

Now, he said, members have the possibility that they may or may have honestly made that decision to close the news desk in a couple of weeks with no prior plans to do so, “which is not a great sign of their ability to forecast” or “they lied to us and knew all along that this is what they were going to do and waited until we closed the contract to do it”.

“They haven’t built a lot of credibility with their employees about how they interact with the union,” he added.

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Now, they’re waiting to see what the NLRB says, Cowley said. Athletic’s hearing is scheduled for next week.

NYT union members on the picket line. (Getty Images)

“The period where there is a big question mark is what comes after that, because the time it takes for the board to issue its decision is very variable,” he said.

Cowley also hit out at the Times editorial board, which has consistently taken very pro-union positions.

“The New York Times is a large, publicly traded company with many highly paid executives, and they recognize that union contracts transfer some power to workers, and very few companies voluntarily accept that,” he said.

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The Athletic publishing house David Perpich told employees Thursday believed the best approach was for site reporters to have a separate bargaining unit within the NewsGuild.

“The Athletic’s newsroom is completely independent from that of The Times, with separate leadership,” he wrote. “This difference has allowed us to preserve policies and practices specific to the needs of covering sports both nationally and locally, with a nationwide workforce. This has allowed us to maintain our unique workplace culture and deliver our best in class journalism for fans.

“Furthermore, the Athletic needs to be a financially sustainable business that can financially support what has become one of the largest newsrooms, with more than 500 journalists. We have made progress towards this ambition, but we still have a long way to go a long way to go. . A separate contract and bargaining unit is the best way to maintain the size and strength of our newsroom and achieve further growth.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to The New York Times for comment.