Unionized tech employees at The New York Times are accusing management of violating their collective bargaining agreement by using artificial intelligence tools to monitor and evaluate their performance. The dispute centers around two internal AI systems—DX and Glean—that the company has deployed in recent months. The Tech Guild, a unit of the NewsGuild of New York representing about 700 software engineers, designers, product managers, and data analysts, filed grievances and an unfair labor practice charge earlier this month.
One of the tools, DX, is marketed as an engineering productivity platform. It tracks metrics such as the number of pull requests, code commits, tokens used, and even how often employees use generative AI tools. Initially presented as a way to measure overall team performance, the union says DX data has become personalized and is now being cited in disciplinary conversations. Ben Harnett, a software engineer and chair of the unit's generative AI committee, told The Verge that managers have told workers things like, "You only did one pull request per week, and that’s 25 percent below industry standard." He argues that such metrics flatten the complexity of engineering work and ignore quality, context, or the number of features delivered.
The second tool, Glean, is an internal knowledge base search system that indexes wikis, GitHub documents, Google Docs, and emails. Employees can query Glean to find information quickly. However, the Tech Guild contends that the same tool can be used to monitor workers by allowing managers to search for an individual's contributions, comments, or progress on documents. The union says recent disciplinary notices appear to be generated using Glean, and that the tool sometimes produces false information, leading to what Harnett calls "wild goose chases."
"The way that they’re using [DX and Glean], we feel really amounts to deploying surveillance and monitoring tech against the workers," Harnett said. The union believes the use of these tools violates multiple sections of their contract, including protections around privacy and monitoring, job descriptions, and the requirement to notify and bargain with the union before making such changes.
The New York Times did not respond to specific questions about how it uses DX and Glean. Spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha said in a statement that the company disagrees with the characterizations made in the grievances and will respond through the normal contractual process. "Likewise, we will respond to this Request for Information in due course as we’ve done with 80+ other RFIs from the Guild in recent years," she added.
This conflict is part of a larger struggle across the media industry over the role of artificial intelligence in newsrooms. In April, 150 unionized employees at ProPublica walked off the job for 24 hours, with AI use and disclosure being a major sticking point. Earlier, McClatchy, which owns newspapers such as the Miami Herald and The Sacramento Bee, began rolling out a generative AI tool that produces different versions of stories, prompting some staff to withhold their bylines in protest. Journalists and tech workers alike are demanding that unions negotiate strong protections against unaccountable AI systems that could replace jobs, erode quality, or subject workers to invasive monitoring.
The Times Guild, which represents editorial, ad sales, and support staff, is currently bargaining a new contract. They are pushing for clauses requiring that a human remain behind any AI tool used, that any journalism aided by AI be transparently labeled, and that staff be compensated if the company licenses their content for AI training. The New York Times has used AI for reporting in specific cases, such as parsing millions of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein and scanning satellite images of Gaza to identify bomb strikes. But the broader use of AI for employee surveillance has become a flashpoint.
The Tech Guild's grievances also raise questions about the nature of work in the age of AI. DX, for example, tracks metrics like "tokens used"—a measure of how much AI-generated text or code an employee consumes. Harnett warns that this creates perverse incentives: "It’s going to distract you from actually doing a good job, which is what we think the company should want." He argues that focusing on quantitative metrics ignores qualitative aspects like code maintainability, mentorship, and thoughtful design—all of which are hard to measure but essential to long-term product quality.
Historically, labor disputes have played a key role in shaping workplace technology. The railroad strikes of the late 19th century, for example, were in part a response to the introduction of tracking systems. More recently, Amazon warehouse workers have protested productivity quotas enforced by algorithmic management. The use of AI to monitor white-collar knowledge workers—especially in creative and technical fields—marks a new frontier. The Tech Guild's case could set a precedent for how unionized workers in media and tech industries resist data-driven surveillance.
The New York Times is not the only major publisher grappling with these issues. The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and other outlets have experimented with AI for headlines, summaries, and even article generation—often to the dismay of their staff. In 2023, CNET faced backlash after it was revealed that it had published dozens of AI-generated articles riddled with errors. Some news organizations have banned the use of generative AI tools altogether, while others have struck deals with AI companies to license their content for training models.
For the Tech Guild, the fight is not about banning AI entirely. Harnett emphasizes that "the unit’s position is not that AI shouldn’t ever be used, but that workers should have a say in how it’s deployed." The union wants transparency about what data is collected, how it’s used, and what safeguards are in place. They also want the right to bargain over any new tools that could materially affect working conditions.
As the labor charge moves through the National Labor Relations Board process, the outcome will be closely watched by unions and tech workers across industries. If the NLRB finds that the Times violated the law, it could force the company to cease using the tools or to bargain with the union. Even if it doesn't, the public pressure and negative attention may slow the adoption of such surveillance technologies in newsrooms and beyond.
The battle inside the New York Times is a microcosm of a larger societal debate: how to harness the power of artificial intelligence without sacrificing worker dignity, privacy, and agency. As newspapers and technology companies race to integrate AI into every corner of their operations, organized labor is stepping in to demand guardrails. The next few months will show whether those guardrails can hold.
Source: The Verge News