The Printers' Strike And The Liberal Response
Geltman, Emanuel
For over one hundred days the New York printers stood up against an attack without parallel in recent union negotiations, and achieved what may fairly be called a victory. The most...
...But they did get an agreement on a common date which the Guild and other unions are apparently ready to approve...
...In finally winning a common expiration date, the unions had to yield the best time for that— before Christmas...
...Dorothy Schiff, publisher of the Post, finally broke ranks with the Publishers and resumed publication after eight weeks...
...The printers don't hire labor relations experts—or tough guys...
...The printers, in their own situation, supplied enough of an answer for themselves and for the present...
...pioneers in all kinds of union advances, yet falling behind other trades and crafts in recent years...
...reminds him of...
...Kempton has been an implacable critic of Jimmy Hoffa yet he hasn't entirely veiled his respect for what Hoffa and the teamsters can achieve when they are of a mind to...
...most sections of the labor movement have quite properly resisted it...
...except as it's a talking point...
...It could well be labor needs other weapons than the strike...
...Skills are giving ground before various pressures— automation, of course, but also in the respect for skill and what it can do...
...But the Kemptons and Restons should know better, should they not...
...A union which has encouraged the development of new techniques, which maintains the best-equipped school in the country on the new printing processes, and which has even developed some new processes, yet does indeed find itself up against the serious threat of mass displacement by new machinery...
...but why did she close shop in the first place...
...They did not strike the Post, the Herald-Tribune, the Mirror, or the Long Island Star-Journal...
...Maybe printers' strike benefits are too high, but that's something for the printers to decide...
...Meanwhile the "experts" fret about this more than the Publishers...
...But then he was leading a tough strike, not trying to ingratiate himself with James Reston...
...I've heard it said that the strike was "immoral" —that a minority of printers imposed its will on a majority of citizens, depriving them of news and entertainment (but not quite—because weeklies published, radio and TV kept right on going, a daily, the Standard, was hastily improvised and produced for almost the duration...
...But what came as a shock was the cowardice and viciousness of "labor's friends"—in the national Administration., in the academy, and generally in what passes for the liberal community...
...I am grateful that I never had property and family in Cuba...
...Or would these champions of the people's rights (in Cuba...
...A craft union of immense, and doubtless excessive, pride that helped organize the industrial unions of the CIO, and retained a close attachment to the industrial unions up to the time of merger—yet remained in the AFL...
...The printers struck the Times, the News, the Journal-American, and the WorldTelegram & Sun...
...On the whole he did a commendable job...
...For that is exactly what happened...
...Is the strike, born of independence, passion and need, outdated— or is still a painful last resort...
...If the typographers suffer the sin of false pride in relation to other trades which were longer in getting organized than theirs, and re quired less skill, what shall we say of those liberals who have decided that the printers are paid enough...
...Should he be voted out of office at the next election (conducted by referendum in every shop...
...There are many realities the printers have to face...
...Now Reston is no ordinary reporter...
...his own situation...
...Guildsmen suffered heavily...
...No one will praise them for having demonstrated any skill in public relations...
...Bert Powers might have been a bit more pedagogic and persuasive in his interviews...
...Four papers handling the news are still enough to keep the people informed—let's say inadequately, but well enough in an emergency...
...Newsdealers suffered...
...We get here to a key issue in the strike, even if it seemed like a dodge to the uninformed...
...This is no small point, practically or psychologically...
...It's a good thing for their own future that there are some men and women around, in the typographers and other allied unions, to save these pipsqueaks from themselves...
...Good for her...
...Printers' strike assessments are very high...
...According to Kempton the Reston column was suppressed because the Times management was afraid of Powers...
...Let us, then, have a look at their union...
...The printers maintained that the principal issue was not wages, but a common expiration date for all contracts...
...What was disastrous about it...
...Does that strike Kempton and Reston as exorbitant...
...Maybe they had a twinge of conscience on what in fact constitutes news fit to print...
...Not the worst wage in the country, nor the best...
...He's the doyen of reporters, no less...
...Where, however, were the Publishers denounced for LOCKING OUT the printers...
...are not afraid of the firing squad...
...The steelworkers would settle a contract, and that was supposed to become the pattern for auto workers, everyone...
...And some liberals ought to be having sober second thoughts—or first ones...
...the demand is for cheap not good typography...
...Could be...
...It is to the credit of the Guild leadership that it held the line against the panicky in the Guild ranks who wanted to break the strike...
...For over one hundred days the New York printers stood up against an attack without parallel in recent union negotiations, and achieved what may fairly be called a victory...
...In his March 30 piece, Kempton remarks that what riled Reston was that the sacrosanct Times had been struck...
...some things are clearly too holy to be tampered with...
...If memory serves, he did a couple of such columns in The New York Post not long ago about the ILGWU...
...The liberals who cursed the strike as "immoral"—haven't they resolved as well that all strikes are immoral and unforgivable...
...Eventually mailers, photoengravers struck...
...With Kempton's second piece, The New Republic printed a column by James Reston that The New York Times suppressed in its Western and Paris editions...
...And the men discharging these skills have needs and aspirations—almost as serious as Reston's...
...Other crafts respected picket lines...
...Take Murray Kempton, a red-hot if ever there was one...
...They merely fought the battle this year...
...The membership of the union is reluctant to yield the reproduction clause—jobs again—but it is no longer the passionate point it was a few years ago...
...We could pity Kempton, and leave it at that...
...Not that it would have done them any good if they had—without paper and pressmen and printing skills, what could they have done...
...A union which still invokes an image of highly paid workers dressed in top hats, yet which at the start of the strike in New York averaged a mere $140 a week on newspapers (and less in commercial shops...
...Bertram D. Powers, president of Local 6, is a powerhungry tyrant...
...Compulsory arbitration...
...Easy enough to denounce them if they want to control the machines in New York that can produce newspapers in California and Paris...
...A union which has led the movement for unification with the Newspaper Guild and all the printing unions, yet provoked the wildest antagonism in the Guild...
...Presumably Reston would not have reacted as intemperately if only the Trib had been involved...
...The New Republic and Life etc...
...And their decision will have far-reaching effects in promoting the common welfare of all the employees in the industry...
...A union which is the most democratic and honest in the country, yet denounced as boss-ridden by those who get paid to know better...
...By settling with the Guild first, the Publishers imposed terms on the printers and other crafts regardless of separate needs and problems—and the ability to achieve more by negotiation...
...The most remarkable aspect of the strike was not the tenacity of the printers, but the shallowness of the liberal response...
...I've saved this point for last, and come back to Kempton, because I think this reflects a symptom of the (continued on page 200) zoo continued from page 118 times...
...The printers had had a bellyfull of this...
...And they stopped it...
...I don't know...
...Beyond that question lies the great er one—are unions necessary...
...he'll be back at his linotype machine, not sipping martinis on Madison Avenue...
...The assassination of opponents by a dictatorship (which permits no strikes...
...Every official, in no matter what capacity, has to be a working member of the trade...
...It was to be expected that Henry Luce's Life would editorialize its regret that the good-old-fashioned days of strike-breaking were past—in New York anyway...
...maybe they'll be in a better position to cope with these problems in the future...
...The printers took care of themselves...
...A union which is the oldest in the country, its New York local the longest in continuous operation—over one hundred years...
...With the twelve-and-a-half dollar package, over two years, that settled the strike, the newspaper printers will be making about $150-a-week on the average...
...Why shouldn't the members want to cushion the jolt of displacement...
...The typographers were not the only craft to strike...
...Or were the Publishers blackmailers...
...Score one for Mayor Wagner...
...They pay for those benefits...
...There are other realities, Standards are being cheapened...
...True, he more often covers big national emergencies than printers' strikes (it took the printers 79 years to bust loose in New York City), and Reston can find a strike "an acceptable situation in a meat factory or a steel mill, but newspapers are not pork chops or iron fences...
...No, they are the products of paper and ink and many skills...
...Teachers have struck in France, for example, without retarding the mental development of a notable number of children...
...For when Reston openly pleads for strikebreaking and calls Bert Powers "the boss of the New York Printers" he plainly disqualifies himself as an expert...
...it was only a stall...
...When Powers announced that he had to submit the Mayor's proposed settlement to the membership, the idiot newscasters on radio and TV scoffed...
...But when the typographers refused to go along with the pattern set in the Guild contract, Kempton could no longer take the hurt...
...That's something else about the typographers...
...What a spectacle that was...
...But the strike still brings to his mind the image of Cuba...
...They should know that the typographers have a "clumsy" democracy whereby everything has to go to the membership...
...Ignorance is a poor excuse under any conditions, but what shall we say about those who lack even that dismal excuse...
...Admittedly, the typographers did not get their argument over well...
...Were the workers Luddites...
...Not that they had much opportunity to exercise what skills they had...
...Covering the labor scene as he has for years, he has on more than one occasion, and with the caustic skill which marks his best word, rapped the unions, and their leadership, for neglect of militancy— not social or ideological militancy, but plain old wages-hours-and-conditions militancy...
...EMANUEL GELTMAN...
...Maybe they should have yielded a week or two earlier when the International officers advised them to...
...But not so easy to dispense with the human problem...
...In a more recent column in The New Republic he ships oars a little in a kind of reluctant embarrassment, and concedes that "it is impossible for me to talk about the newspaper strike in other than personal terms...
...Where is a suppressed column by James Reston protesting this lockout...
...Interestingly, little was said, except as a kind of undercurrent, about "bogus" or reproduction...
...Are Guildsmen, teachers, bricklayers indifferent to automation and technological changes...
...really prefer a Hoffa who can ram terms down any membership's throat...
...Why, there are assistant professors, still busy collecting footnotes for their desiccated dissertations who get paid more...
...Actually, we have been up against this problem for many years...
...A lot of them were ready to buck the picket line...
...Came the printers' strike, and Kempton fell apart at the seams...
...Just themselves...
...That's a provision in the contract whereby a certain number of ads, and as it happens a smaller and smaller number, are reset in each shop, though the ad that actually runs in the paper has already been set elsewhere...
...But let's get back to the liberal re action, and what it signifies...
...Obviously, the printers aren't the only ones who face such problems...
...The leadership has been try ing to get the members to understand that they will have to yield this point eventually—for a worthwhile gain...
...These closed by the decision of the Publishers...
...but that's democracy for you, isn't it, Murray Kempton...
...But why didn't Murray Kempton threaten to—well, threaten to tear up his membership card in the Socialist party if the lockout wasn't ended forthwith...
...And its a better thing that the majority of the Guild, and its leaders, showed that they had a sense of responsibility in what was, of course, a time of great strain...
...A year ago a prominent union official, who "represents" labor in such public bodies as the Board of Education, called the teachers' strike a disaster...
...The trade is being automated and massified...
...Must the unions become the property of the Jimmy Hoffas, or can they still serve their ends decently and militantly...
...Maybe the Times management sensibly preferred not to pour oil on the fire...
...It could be that he objected to the Newspaper Guild strike which preceded the typographers' strike...
...But the typographers provoked the wrath...
...Yes, lots of people were hurt...
...Nothing to prevent Murray Kempton proposing at his Guild meeting that assessments be raised to the level of the printers' so that benefits can be high in a strike...
...He joined The New Republic as an editor, and in its December 22 issue compounded hysteria with journalistic irresponsibility: the typographers are Luddites...
Vol. 10 • April 1963 • No. 2
