- The New York Times’ Tech Guild union has accused the company of violating labor contracts by deploying AI to track the performance and activities of tech employees.
- Approximately 700 software engineers, designers, product managers, and data specialists within the Tech Guild have filed a complaint regarding the non-transparent use of AI.
- The “DX” tool is being used to measure engineer productivity, tracking output, generative AI usage, and employee efficiency.
- Employees state that DX was initially introduced to improve the developer experience but was later used for individual evaluations and labor discipline.
- Some employees received warnings for creating only about one pull request per week, which is 25% lower than the “industry standard” according to DX’s AI data.
- The union argues that these AI metrics ignore actual work quality and turn engineers into quantitative figures lacking context.
- The “Glean” tool, which integrates internal wikis, GitHub, Google Docs, and email for knowledge search, is suspected of being used for employee surveillance.
- The Tech Guild suspects that recent disciplinary notices were automatically generated by Glean’s AI based on employees’ internal activity data.
- The editorial union, Times Guild, representing about 1,500 employees, has also demanded transparent AI regulations, including mandatory human control over AI and labeling of AI content.
- Other U.S. newsrooms, such as ProPublica and McClatchy, are also facing significant controversies regarding AI, automated news stories, and journalism labor rights.
📌 The confrontation between AI and knowledge workers is escalating sharply in the U.S. media industry. The New York Times is accused of using AI tools like DX and Glean to monitor employee performance, creating quantitative pressure and supporting labor discipline. This controversy reflects a broader trend where AI is increasingly integrated into newsrooms but lacks mechanisms for transparency, control, and worker protection.
