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Last week was the week that NBC News and The New York Times Co. had told workers to return to their central offices, at least part-time.
Employees of the two companies’ digital divisions have not complied.
The union representing Times workers said on 11 September that it had collected 1,280 signed pledges from those employees that they would stay home.
The holdout is part of employees’ campaign for higher pay and more flexible work arrangements and greater diversity and inclusion, several union members told The Wall Street Journal.
At NBC, 215 workers also have stayed firmly at home, video editor Tate James, who also heads his union’s bargaining committee, said to the WSJ.
The workers say they are being forced to comply with a working condition that was not negotiated.
The company is in discussions with the union over a more flexible work arrangement, an NBC spokesperson said.
Unionization has strengthened in U.S. media organizations in recent years. In 2021, workers signed labor contracts with Ars Technica, Condé Nast Publications, and The New Yorker magazine, among others.
TREND FORECAST: The workers are exercising their newfound power in a tight labor market, exemplifying our Top 2022 Trend of Labor Unions’ Comeback. More workers will continue to be emboldened to assert not only their rights but also their preferences, making the workplace less of a top-down command structure and more of a cooperative place where workers’ needs can be accommodated.
TREND FORECAST: Workers who no longer commute, at least as much, also no longer spend money at downtown shops, restaurants, and service businesses.
In March, the proportion of New York City storefronts remaining empty ranged from 16 percent in Brooklyn’s main shopping district to 30 percent in the neighborhoods around Grand Central Station, ground zero for the million commuters who came into the city every weekday back before the COVID War, according to Our Town, a Manhattan newspaper.
“Storefronts being empty is not just an economic recovery issue,” Kevin Kim, the city’s Small Business Commissioner, said last spring to Our Town. “It also leads to [a] public safety issue.”
“With fewer people being out in the street to shop and walk along the streets, public safety is jeopardized,” he added. “Getting these stores filled with new entrepreneurs, with new ventures is going to be critical for both public safety and economic recovery for the city.”
Mr. Kim may be disappointed in how long, if ever, it will take to refill those dark shops.
Inflation and a looming recession will restrict the number of entrepreneurs willing to risk a new venture in the current economy.
As the nation and the world sinks into Dragflation, storefronts will barely gain new occupants, crime will continue to rise and the move to the suburbs and exurban areas will increase.