New York Occasions tech staff are nonetheless on strike after walking out one day before the presidential election. Meaning they’re nonetheless asking folks to skip their normal Crossword, Wordle, or Connections routines. However now, the union has launched its personal choices for video games lovers that would maintain them from crossing the digital picket line.
“We all know how exhausting it’s to interrupt your Wordle streak, so we’ve been exhausting at work making extra video games for our supporters!” the Occasions Tech Guild wrote on X on Thursday.
On a web page of the guild’s web site known as Guild Builds, there are at the moment seven video games: Strikle, a riff on Wordle; Connections: Strike Version; Phrase Search; Match Strike, a memory-matching sport; Frogger eighth Ave (the New York Occasions workplace is situated on Eighth Avenue); Scabby’s Truthful Contract Builder (a reference to labor motion image Scabby the Rat); and Trivia and Jokes.
The video games may not have new variations each day; they’ll be up to date “when they are often,” Jen Sheehan, spokesperson for the NewsGuild of New York (which the New York Occasions Tech Guild is a part of), instructed The Verge. Sheehan added that guild members made all of the video games apart from Strikle, which was made by an “exterior supporter.” (Strikle first debuted when the guild held a one-day walkout in 2022.)
The New York Occasions Tech Guild represents greater than 600 staff, together with software program engineers, information analysts, designers, and others behind video games just like the Every day Crossword and the Occasions’s apps and audio merchandise. The Guild has been in contract negotiations with Occasions administration for greater than two years; its election to certify the union occurred in March 2022.
And because the guild has additionally requested folks to not use the Occasions Cooking app throughout the length of the strike, its Guild Builds web page additionally consists of recipes with a “strike” theme—like kimchi “simply trigger” jigae, referring to the job protections the guild is searching for, which imply workers couldn’t be fired with out motive or a good course of. There’s additionally solidarity soup and “We’ve bought beef with administration” stuffed mushrooms.