The union representing tech employees at The New York Times is threatening to strike, just as the paper enters crunch time for coverage of the 2024 elections.

The “protracted contract negotiations” with the Times Tech Guild, a branch of 600 unionized workers at the paper, concern several financial and other contract provisions, according to Semafor. “[T]he Guild proposed a ban on scented products in break rooms, unlimited break time, and accommodations for pet bereavement, as well as mandatory trigger warnings in company meetings discussing events in the news.”

The Guild and management disagree on a variety of issues, including differences in the average salaries among different classes of employees. According to Semafor:

For its part, the Guild has said that the new contract will help correct pay inequities. The Tech Guild’s recent internal survey said it found significant pay disparities between white employees and nonwhite employees, and between men and women on staff (the paper disputed this, saying the Guild’s methodology was flawed and didn’t compare the pay of employees performing similar work).

The New York Times management team has a point. An overall average pay gap (or any gap) doesn’t tell you much unless you adjust for relevant factors, like careers, hours worked, age, seniority, etc. It is not evidence for discrimination that Asian American women make, on average, more than white men in the United States or that men are more likely to get killed on the job.

Perhaps the paper’s lawyers and management team should tell the reporters. In article after article after article, New York Times reporters fail to do an apples-to-apples comparison when writing about the gender or racial “pay gap.” Either they don’t compare the pay of men and women performing the same work or they rely on some other flawed methodology.

The best research shows that the gender pay gap is mostly because of purposeful life choices. It is rarely the result of systemic decisions by employers to pay some subgroups less than others simply because of their race or gender. Maintaining this myth has costs: The proposed solutions will only make things worse, and all the time wasted on ghost problems is time that could have been spent addressing real problems that affect real people.

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