Minority employees working for The New York Times earn 10 percent less than the average wage, and female employees make 7 percent less than male coworkers, according to a new study.
The News Guild of New York, a union which represents 3,000 journalists and media employees in New York-based media organizations, conducted a study in the spring examining bargaining unit wages. News Guild is an affiliate of the Communication Workers of America union, which represents 32,000 journalists and media employees across the country.
Responding to the study, The New York Times said that it “found no evidence of discrimination in how employees are compensated in the groups we have examined.” The New York Times cited its own analysis, and was very specific to use the word, “discrimination” rather than discuss the actual income disparities that may exist.
“’No evidence of discrimination’ doesn’t address the fact that pay equity is a problem at the Times,” Peter Szekely, president of the New York Guild and Grant Glickson, chair of the Guild’s New York Times unit said in a statement. The Guild noted that it never alleged discrimination against the Times, and blasted the paper for responding as it did. “Setting such a low bar of not violating any discrimination laws should not be the company’s goal,” the Guild said following the public release of its findings.
The Times responded to a request for comment by The Daily Caller News Foundation, claiming that the union’s analysis was incomplete. The newspaper explained that the analysis simply assumed that any differences in pay were discriminatory, when there were possible non-discriminatory reasons that a man and a woman could be paid differently.
“There are, of course, many legitimate factors that affect compensation that have nothing to do with discrimination: they include nature and scope of work, tenure in the role, performance, experience and competition for talent in the relevant labor market in a given period of time,” The Times told the DCNF via email.
Citing its own analysis, The Times noted that “the variations we found between individuals were the result of differences relating to the work they perform, experience, expertise, performance and the labor market.”
The Guild decided to go public with its May findings, after the Times failed to respond to a request to discuss the problem with its union. “The New York Times has squandered an opportunity to have a full discussion with its largest union on critical pay equity issues,” a statement from the Guild declared.
“We call on the Times to demonstrate the transparency it rightly demands of others in its role as one of the nation’s premier news organizations,” Szekely said. The Times says that it does plan to adjust pay for “a small number of employees.”
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