On Tuesday night, New York Times tech workers spent their second evening on the picket line. Photo by Sophie Hurwitz

As the sun set over the New York Times building on election night, the Times Tech Guild—the union of workers that power the infrastructure for the company’s news, games, and cooking—closed out their second day on the picket line. Their strike, an attempt to push for a deal they’ve negotiated for over two years, might bring down tonight one of America’s most beloved and beloathed election-night prognosticators: the Needle.

As reporter and polls expert Nate Cohn explained on X, the tech team “built and maintain the infrastructure that feeds [the Needle] data and lets [the Times] publish [it] on the internet.” As of the time of publication, the Needle is up. But it’s unclear if without the guild’s work it will last.

The Tech Guild wants pay equity, remote work protections, and—top of many minds on Tuesday night—protection from being arbitrarily fired, known as “just cause.”

The 173-year-old Times has over the past several years transformed into something more like a tech company with the news as a key, but not singular, component. Its games and cooking apps drive subscriptions; it has expanded into audio and sports. With that transformation has come a change in how workers organize at the company. Now, alongside their newspaper and advertising workers’ unions, the paper hosts one of the largest tech unions in the country.

Kathy Zhang, unit chair for the New York Times Tech Guild, has had “probably hundreds of conversations” with her fellow workers leading up to this moment. I asked her about the picket line, the Needle, and why workers........

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