Unionized staff with the Tech Guild say Times management has refused to provide the union with information related to how the company has used AI, its plans for AI use in the future, and how it will affect employees’ jobs and workflow. (The union filed an unfair labor practice charge earlier this month.) The Tech Guild, a NewsGuild of New York unit of around 700 software engineers, designers, product and project managers, and data analysts, also filed grievances saying Times management violated their collective bargaining agreement when it started using two internal AI tools that track and evaluate employee performance and activity.
One of the AI tools, called DX, advertises itself as an engineering productivity tool that lets companies track employees’ output, generative AI use, and efficiency, among other metrics. DX was originally announced internally as a way to improve the developer experience, says Ben Harnett, a software engineer at the Times and chair of the unit’s generative AI committee. The goal, at least according to Times management, was to measure the company as a whole. Over the last few months, though, the DX data has become more personalized, with benchmarks being applied to individuals, Harnett says.
“Now people in disciplinary situations are suddenly having read back to them, ‘You only did one [pull request] per week, per whatever, and that’s 25 percent below industry standard,’” Harnett says.
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