How newsrooms should use artificial intelligence—or if they should at all—has become a recurring debate in the media industry over the past several years. Increasingly, these rules are being negotiated at the bargaining table between unions and publishers. Currently, employees at The New York Times are heading into a significant confrontation.

Unionized staff with the Tech Guild claim that Times management has refused to provide the union with details on how the company has used AI, its plans for future AI use, and how that will affect employees' jobs and workflow. The Tech Guild, a NewsGuild of New York unit representing around 700 software engineers, designers, product and project managers, and data analysts, also filed grievances alleging that management violated their collective bargaining agreement when it began using two internal AI tools that track and evaluate employee performance and activity.

One of those tools, called DX, is marketed as an engineering productivity platform that allows companies to track employees' output, generative AI use, and efficiency. DX was originally announced internally as a way to improve developer experience, according to Ben Harnett, a software engineer at the Times and chair of the unit’s generative AI committee. The stated goal was to measure the company as a whole. However, over the past few months, Harnett says, the DX data has become more personalized, with benchmarks being applied to individuals.

“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,’” Harnett says. He is concerned that blanket metrics flatten all the work unit members do and erase the nuance of engineering into an opaque set of numbers that can be used against staff in disciplinary or performance reviews. The metrics do not correlate to the quality of work or the actual number of features an employee delivers, Harnett argues.

“All this data reasonably could be expected to help us understand how we’re doing, but not the way they’re using it, which we think amounts to a de facto quota,” Harnett told The Verge. The Tech Guild says DX statistics have been cited in recent disciplinary conversations.

Another tool, called Glean, takes internal knowledge bases like wikis, GitHub documents, Google Docs, and emails, and allows employees to query the system to find information more easily. But workers worry that Glean can also be used to monitor them because it ingests vast amounts of internal documentation. Harnett says if he works on a draft document describing a feature or leaves a comment in a file available in Glean, a manager could query the tool about his individual performance. The Tech Guild told The Verge that the style and format of recent disciplinary notices suggest they were generated using Glean. Harnett adds that Glean has issues—it can generate falsehoods and lead users on “wild goose chases.”

“The way they’re using DX and Glean feels really amounts to deploying surveillance and monitoring tech against the workers,” Harnett says. The union believes this violates multiple parts of their contract, including protections around privacy, monitoring, job descriptions, and requirements for notifying employees and bargaining with them.

Both the Tech Guild and the Times Guild—which represents 1,500 editorial, ad sales, and support staff—have filed unfair labor practice charges against the Times, saying the company violated labor law by refusing to respond to their requests for information about AI use. The Times did not address specific questions about DX and Glean, but spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha said in an email that the company disagrees with the characterizations and will respond through the normal contractual process.

The Times Guild is currently negotiating a new contract, pushing for robust AI protections, such as requiring that a human is behind any AI tool used, that any journalism using AI is transparently labeled, and that staff are compensated for AI model training deals the company might make. The Times already uses AI for some reporting, such as parsing millions of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein or scanning satellite images of Gaza to identify bomb drops.

Journalists across the industry are negotiating union contracts, and AI is a critical issue. In April, 150 unionized employees at ProPublica walked off the job for 24 hours; key sticking points included AI use and disclosure. After McClatchy—publisher of the Miami Herald and The Sacramento Bee—started rolling out a generative AI tool that rewrites stories, some staff withheld bylines in protest.

Harnett emphasizes that the unit is not opposed to AI entirely, but believes workers should have a say in how it is deployed. Metrics like token usage or AI frequency create pressure to do more, incentivizing quantity over quality. “It’s going to distract you from actually doing a good job, which is what we think the company should want,” he says.

The broader context of this dispute reflects a growing tension in the journalism industry. As publishers seek cost efficiencies and innovation through AI, unions are demanding transparency, consent, and fair treatment. The New York Times, a flagship news organization, is now at the center of this struggle. The outcomes of these negotiations could set precedents for how AI is used in newsrooms nationwide.

Historical context is important: The New York Times has long been a leader in digital transformation, but its relationship with unions has been fraught. The Tech Guild formed in 2022 and quickly secured a contract after a short strike threat. Now, AI tools like DX and Glean represent a new frontier. DX, developed by a third party, uses machine learning to analyze code commits, pull requests, and developer activity. Glean, an enterprise search tool, uses natural language processing to index internal content. Both raise privacy and fairness concerns.

Harnett notes that DX benchmarks are compared to industry standards, but those standards may not account for the complexity of work at the Times. For example, a developer working on critical infrastructure may produce fewer commits but more impactful features. Similarly, Glean’s ability to surface any document could lead to micromanagement.

The Tech Guild has filed multiple grievances and an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). If the NLRB finds merit, it could order the Times to cease using these tools without bargaining. However, the process is slow, and in the meantime, workers feel pressure. The Times, for its part, maintains it is following the contract and will respond appropriately.

This story is part of a larger trend. AI-powered performance monitoring is spreading across industries, from warehouses to offices. In journalism, where creativity and nuance are paramount, such tools are particularly contentious. The Society of Professional Journalists has called for ethical guidelines, and unions are making AI a central bargaining issue.

As the Times case unfolds, it serves as a test for how much control workers can retain over their digital labor. The outcome may influence not only the Times but other media companies and tech-enabled workplaces. For now, the fight continues, with both sides preparing for what could be a protracted legal and public relations battle.

Source: The Verge News