Via America’s Lawyer: The New York Times is in hot water for allegedly suppressing union activity by its workers. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: New York Times has been caught interfering with their workers’ attempts to start a union, according to the National Labor Board. Wow. I mean, aren’t these the people that are always leading the, you know, it used to be, we could, we could, we could count on New York Times for people who’ve been victimized. They’d be, New York Times would be take the high ground. People who are disaffected in some way, New York Times takes the high ground. Here, they’re trying to close down union leadership with this ridiculous argument they’re making. What’s the argument?
Farron Cousins: The argument is, you know, well, you guys aren’t actually able to unionize because you have interns, therefore you’re supervisors, you’re management.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: So none of you actually qualify for a union. And of course the National Labor Relation Board comes in says, that’s, that’s not how this works, New York Times. And, and, and they’re targeting specifically their tech journalists, which is obviously a hugely important part of the media right now. We need them to accurately report. But when we have these big media corporations, whether it’s New York Times, we saw it with MSNBC trying to kill the unions there.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm. Who also was, has this aura, well we’re really for the little guy.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You know, we’re really for the consumer. Hell, when it comes down to corporate decisions, it’s all about money and this is the same, same way here. New York Times has no high ground here at all.
Farron Cousins: Right. Right, and that, that’s the, that’s the point to me. That’s what gets me about this story is this casts a doubt on everything they do.
Mike Papantonio: It does.
Farron Cousins: Any kind of worker story they do, any union story they do. Now we know that behind the scenes, they’re just as bad as the people they’re reporting on. So can we take them seriously?
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And, and that’s the issue.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I mean, they already have problems. First of all, they, everybody realizes that they’re so heavily tribal. They’re so heavily tied into their commitment to ideology that maybe they’ve lost their journalism, you know, the edge. But now we see it’s a show. It, it’s simply this all a show because they don’t care about these people who have the right to unionize. They’re doing everything, as a matter of fact, the most disturbing thing is there’s been two attempts to say, let’s sit down at a table and compromise. Let’s try to mediate this. They refused to do that.
Farron Cousins: Well, yeah, and that’s unfortunately what we’re seeing far too many times. But what we saw in 2021, not necessarily at New York Times, but all these strikes all over the country that were hugely successful. The attempts at unionization that ultimately proved successful, hopefully we can get that at the New York Times, make them understand that these people have to be treated fairly because that’s what it’s all about.
Mike Papantonio: There’s no leader, there’s no leadership at the New York Times right now. It’s like Home Alone. I swear to God. When you read the stories, the back stories about the New York Times, it is like the movie Home Alone. They got these kids that are running things. They’re running, they’re running an agenda that’s totally inconsistent without all of those decades and decades of credibility that the New York Times used to have. And it’s, it’s very disturbing.
