The union, part of the NewsGuild of New York, had set a deadline for a contract for midnight Dec 8.

The 24-hour walkout marked the first time New York Times employees have participated in a work stoppage since the early 1980s and comes amid a growing labour movement across the US in which employees from companies such as Amazon, Starbucks Corp and Apple Inc have organised in an effort to push back against what they say are unfair labour practices.

“Today we were ready to work for as long as it took to reach a fair deal, but management walked away from the table with five hours to go,” the New York Times union tweeted on Wednesday.

The New York Times issued a statement confirming the strike. “It is disappointing that they are taking such an extreme action when we are not at an impasse,” the company said.

In the media industry, journalists at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, owned by Block Communications Inc, and the McClatchy-owned Fort Worth Star-Telegram are currently on open-ended strikes.

On Nov 4 over 200 union journalists across 14 Gannett-owned news outlets – including the Desert Sun in California and New Jersey’s Asbury Park Press – participated in a one-day strike.

In August, nearly 300 Thomson Reuters Corp journalists in the US, also represented by the NewsGuild of New York, staged a 24-hour strike as the union negotiates with the company for a new three-year contract.

The Times Guild represents journalists as well as ad sales workers, comment moderators, news assistants, security guards and staffers at The Times Center, the company’s events venue and virtual production studio.

Tech employees of the Times voted last March to unionise and have been trying separately to negotiate their first contract.