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Comment by cool_dude85 | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure the tech guild would be happy for the writers' union to win contract raises too. I don't know why you think they wouldn't be.

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Is there enough money to afford the proposed pay raises? 6% profit margin isn't much. Granting the proposed pay raises to both groups could easily put the company in the red.

Not sure where your 6% figure comes from, but you can easily find the 2023 Annual Report which states the following:

> Adjusted operating profit margin (adjusted operating profit expressed as a percentage of revenues) increased to 16.1% in 2023, compared with 15.1% in 2022.

You might also look into the NYT's recent history of stock buybacks while denying raises to their lowest-paid employees. The money is there.

There are a host of other real expenses that need to be paid that "adjusted operating profit" doesn't account for. I'd be really surprised if total net profit was more than 50-65% of that.

Point taken. I'd still maintain that the stock buybacks are egregious and need to stop.

To emphasize: that point I can totally agree with. While I don't know the details of all the reasons this union is striking, I can certainly imagine lots of good, plausible reasons, and stock buybacks (if they are egregious) would be at the top of the list.

I was just pushing back against using "big tech comp packages" as some sort of baseline for what unions should be pushing for. It is completely unrealistic and people who say stuff like this hurt their own cause by not living in reality.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ny+times+profit+margin

In June it was 10.6%, in March it was 6.9%

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