The New York Times is facing a growing internal conflict over its use of artificial intelligence tools to monitor and evaluate the performance of its tech workforce. Unionized employees with the Tech Guild, a unit of roughly 700 software engineers, designers, product managers, and data analysts, have accused management of violating their collective bargaining agreement by deploying two AI-powered platforms—DX and Glean—without proper negotiation or transparency. The union has filed formal grievances and unfair labor practice charges, arguing that the tools amount to surveillance and are being used to discipline staff based on flawed metrics.
What Are DX and Glean?
DX is marketed as an engineering productivity tool that tracks a wide range of metrics, including code output, generative AI usage, and individual efficiency. Originally introduced as a way to measure overall team performance, the Tech Guild claims that DX has increasingly been used to generate personalized benchmarks for individual employees. According to Ben Harnett, a software engineer at the Times and chair of the union’s generative AI committee, these benchmarks have been cited in disciplinary conversations. “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 said. He expressed concern that such metrics flatten the nuance of engineering work and fail to capture the quality or complexity of an employee’s contributions.
The second tool, Glean, functions as an internal search engine that indexes a company’s wikis, GitHub repositories, Google Docs, and emails. While intended to help employees quickly locate information, the union believes it can also be used to monitor individual activity. Harnett noted that a manager could query Glean about a specific employee’s drafts or comments, effectively creating a detailed log of their work habits. The Tech Guild has pointed out that recent disciplinary notices appear to have been generated using Glean, raising concerns about automated decision-making. Additionally, Glean has been criticized for generating false information, leading users on what Harnett described as “wild goose chases.”
Union Actions and Alleged Contract Violations
The Tech Guild argues that the use of DX and Glean violates multiple sections of their contract, including provisions related to privacy, monitoring, job descriptions, and the requirement to notify and bargain with the union before implementing new tools. In response to management’s refusal to provide detailed information about how these AI tools are used and planned to be used in the future, the union filed an unfair labor practice charge earlier this month. The Times Guild, which represents about 1,500 editorial, ad sales, and support staff, separately filed a similar charge, stating that the company had unlawfully declined to answer requests for information about AI usage across the organization.
Both unions are demanding greater transparency and a seat at the table when decisions about AI deployment are made. “We feel really [this] amounts to deploying surveillance and monitoring tech against the workers,” Harnett said. The unions contend that the metrics collected by these tools are not only inaccurate but also create a culture of constant oversight that undermines trust and morale. The Tech Guild is particularly concerned that DX statistics have been used in disciplinary settings, effectively creating a de facto quota system that pressures employees to prioritize quantity over quality.
Broader Context: AI in the Newsroom
The conflict at the Times is part of a wider debate across the media industry about the role of artificial intelligence in the workplace. In recent months, journalists at ProPublica staged a 24-hour walkout, with AI use being a key sticking point in contract negotiations. Similarly, staff at McClatchy—the publisher of the Miami Herald and The Sacramento Bee—protested the rollout of a generative AI tool that produces multiple versions of news articles, with some reporters withholding their bylines. These actions reflect a growing unease among media workers that AI could be used to replace jobs, erode journalistic standards, or subject employees to invasive monitoring.
The Times Guild is currently bargaining a new contract and has pushed for robust AI protections. Proposed measures include requiring that every AI tool used in news production has a human operator, transparent labeling of any AI-generated content, and compensation for employees when their work is used to train AI models. The company, for its part, has already deployed AI for certain journalistic purposes, such as analyzing millions of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein and scanning satellite images of Gaza to identify specific types of bombs. However, the internal use of AI for performance evaluation represents a new frontier in workplace surveillance.
Management’s Response
The New York Times has not directly addressed the specifics of the union’s allegations regarding DX and Glean. In a statement, spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha said, “We disagree with the characterizations made in the grievances and will respond as part of our normal contractual process. Likewise, we will respond to this Request for Information (RFI) in due course as we’ve done with 80+ other RFIs from the Guild in recent years.” The company maintains that the tools are intended to improve productivity and the developer experience, but the union remains skeptical that such metrics can be used fairly.
Implications for the Future
The outcome of this dispute could have significant implications for how AI is governed in newsrooms and other workplaces. As unions across industries push for more control over technology that affects their members, the Times case may serve as a precedent for how collective bargaining can address the challenges of algorithmic management. Harnett emphasized that the Tech Guild is not opposed to using AI outright but insists that workers must have a meaningful voice in how it is deployed. “It’s going to distract [you] from actually doing a good job, which is what we think the company should want,” he said. The fight at the Times is likely to intensify as both sides prepare for arbitration and further negotiations over the role of AI in the workplace.
Source: The Verge News