Hundreds of New York Times workers stage walkout to protest job cuts
By
Fred Mazelis
1 July 2017
Hundreds of New York Times employees staged a brief walkout on Thursday afternoon to protest the newspaper’s plans for major staff cuts through buyouts and layoffs. The main focus of the demonstration was the plan to eliminate the freestanding copy desk and do away with the jobs of dozens of copy editors.
The newspaper plans to “streamline” its editing process. The elimination of a separate copy desk will seriously diminish the role of copy editors in the preparation of the final version of articles. There are currently several stages in the preparation of copy, including one in which editors work directly with reporters, followed by copy editing, including the choice of headlines, fact-checking, correcting grammatical and spelling errors and other tasks. The Times plans to replace this with a single editor responsible for a given article.
By management’s own account, more than 100 copy editor positions are being eliminated in one swoop, while applications are then being taken for about 50 positions after the reorganization of the department. This technique, increasingly common in the corporate world, will enable the company to pick and choose its rehired editors without regard to seniority.
The Thursday walkout, apparently aimed by the union representing Times editorial employees at appealing to the “conscience” of the Times owners, is only a pale expression of the outrage felt by the copy editors and other Times employees.
Employees marched outside the Times’s modern office building on Eighth Avenue in midtown Manhattan with signs declaring, “Without us it’s the New Yrok Times,” “This sign wsa not edited,” and “Copy editors save our buts.”…