Labor's Shotgun Wedding
BROWN, BERNARD D.
NATIONAL REPORTS Labor's Shotgun Wedding By Bernard D. Brown Now that the sound and the fury have subsided in the New York newspaper strike-lockout, leaving in their wake the bruised and...
...In hearings before the National Labor Relations Board, their representatives pleaded for the right to regard a strike against one paper as a strike against all...
...At work during the months of July, August and September of 1962, the printers grew increasinglyrestive...
...Most editorial workers seldom get to know printers, or, for that matter, members of the other craft unions...
...Guild and Big Six leaders had clearly indicated that 1962 was likely to be the year of the showdown...
...That year, the Newspaper Guild of New York struck the World Telegram and Sun, then as now the largest daily in the largest newspaper chain in the country (Scripps-Howard...
...It may have been a shotgun wedding, but it was a wedding, forced not so much by the printers as by the publishers, who may yet live to rue the day...
...In the light of all this, one of the most remarkable features of this latest strike was the refusal of the city's newspaper executives to believe that it would actually ever happen...
...On December 7, when the Big Six and the publishers were unable to come to terms on a new contract, the strategy backfired on the Guild...
...The stage was then set for the dreary tragedy of errors that was to follow...
...But they were told that this was clever strategy, that it split the ranks of the publishers, and that it was not as costly to the Guild as a city-wide shutdown would have been...
...NATIONAL REPORTS Labor's Shotgun Wedding By Bernard D. Brown Now that the sound and the fury have subsided in the New York newspaper strike-lockout, leaving in their wake the bruised and battered pocketbooks of the participants, it may be possible to pierce the fog that enshrouded the strange 16-week struggle from start to finish...
...In 1958 it erupted again, this time in a strike by the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union of New York and Vicinity, an independent group...
...In an effort to forestall the suspension of all the newspapers...
...But compared to newer unions, for many years it has also been one of the most backward in securing fringe benefits...
...Bernard D. Brown, long active in the New York Newspaper Guild, is on the staff of the World-Telegram...
...If nothing else, the common contract expiration date for bargaining new contracts, which is one of the most significant victories of the printer's marathon stoppage, assures this...
...2) The Guild's victory put it in a position of strategic leadership within the unsettled and highly complex labor structure of the newspaper industry...
...From then on, the Guild set the pattern of agreements with the publishers for the other unions...
...Initially, Powers maintained that the strike would be confined to the Times, the News, the Journal-American and the World-Telegram, and that the city's five so-called "marginal" papers would not be struck, thus allowing a continued flow of news and protecting them from the financial havoc of a prolonged tie-up...
...But both stoppages were of relatively short duration—11 days and 19 days, respectively—and both, it was conceded by the leaders of the striking unions, settled no major issues...
...Led by Bertram A. Powers, president of Local 6, the printers were determined to show the Guild that it could no longer expect its agreements to be automatically ratified by the other members of the Unity Committee...
...In 1953, dissatisfaction erupted in the form of a strike by the New York local of the International Photo Engravers Union...
...By 1961, meetings were being held regularly to plan the strategy for a large joint action...
...By and large, they feel they were cut out for better things, but that somehow they never got the breaks...
...Those Guildmen who were so bitter against Powers and his followers for making them suffer through 16 payless paydays, while the printers received handsome strike benefits and unemployment insurance which provided them almost as much takehome pay as they normally get when working, will now have to learn to live with the printers not as social inferiors but as equals and as brother trade unionists...
...More than money, more than a good welfare fund, more than improved sick leave and vacation clauses, the printers want to feel equal to the white-collar men they work with, though they would probably never admit it, even to themselves...
...While officers of the industry's unions had been meeting periodically since the World-Telegram strike, it was not until the 1958 strike that any strong sentiment for closer cooperation developed...
...Their resentment manifested itself in many ways...
...Essentially, the origin of the conflict dates back to 1950...
...Even the most equable among them became difficult to get along with...
...The Publishers Association met to plan a city-wide shutdown...
...This set off a series of events that have still to run their full course...
...On the whole, they are competent craftsmen, but they are also frustrated and, generally speaking, poorly educated men who in recent years have come to feel that the mainstream of the labor movement has passed them by...
...For a time the legality of the position appeared to be in doubt...
...He had, it was claimed, mesmerized the printers...
...The one thing the printers cling to more than anything else, and which has been almost totally unrecognized in all discussions and analyses of the strike, is pride in their craft...
...At that point...
...This is primarily what the printers struck for...
...One of the most persistent myths of the strike, fostered by the poorly informed news media, was that Bertram Powers is a power-hungry union politician...
...They expressed dissatisfaction with editors in general and with the Guild in particular...
...And for the first time in the city's history, members of Local 6 (Big Six) of the International Typographical Union and eight other craft unions having contracts with the Publishers Association of New York refused to cross the Guild's picket line...
...Among other things, I happen to be a makeup man and have worked closely with printers for many years...
...After eight days of negotiations, despite the fact that in their Unity Committee deliberations the union leaders had voted 6-4 against acceptance of an $8.50 package offered by the News, Guild Executive Vice President Thomas J. Murphy felt he had gotten all he could out of the publishers, and a Guild News membership meeting ratified settlement terms...
...But in September 1962, the NLRB, reversing an earlier finding of one of its examiners, upheld the legitimacy of the publishers' stand...
...At meeting after meeting of the Guild last year, one could not help hearing rumblings of approaching disaster...
...On November 1, following four months of futile negotiations with representatives of the city's seven major dailies, the Guild struck the Daily News and the craft unions respected its picket lines...
...Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz intervened personally...
...Prior to the recent strike, it had not struck in New York City for some 65 years...
...But the unthreatened papers announced that they too were suspending publication, and the strike-lockout was on...
...This might seem strange, since the ITU is one of the oldest unions in America...
...The myth was exploded with a shattering finality on March 17, however, when the printers rejected, by a vote of 1,616 to 1,557, the recommendation of Powers and ITU President Elmer Brown that they accept Mayor Robert H. Wagner's proposals to end the strike...
...This situation troubled not only the Big Six but all of the craft unions...
...Thus the new-found unity of the leaders of the 10 unions quickly showed signs of strain...
...I know many of them well and find them a fiercely proud group...
...At the root of these ominous sounds was the publishers' warning that they would not submit to any "divide and conquer" tactics, and their threat of "massive retaliation" if the papers were struck one at a time...
...The publishers' resistance to the rising cost of higher wages, shorter hours and additional fringe benefits intensified the pressure for unity among the newspaper unions...
...If the Guild and the Big Six were merely "going steady" before the strike, they are now married...
...Yet biennially the Guild somehow managed to come out better than the others in terms of wages, hours and fringe benefits...
...Two results, though, were self-evident: 1) Craft-union support of the Guild's strike closed down a major New York daily for 10 weeks...
...Guild members, having repeatedly been advised by their leaders throughout 1962 that the policy of "no contract, no work" would be applied to all papers on midnight, October 31, were puzzled by the actions of their officers and the News unit...
...Guild leaders began to meet regularly with the officers of the craft unions belonging to the Allied Trades Council: the printers, photo engravers, Stereotypers, electrotypers, pressmen, paper handlers and sheet straighteners, mailers, deliverers and bookbinders...
...In the end, the printers were to carry the strike farther than anyone, including their own leader, wanted them to...
...And in this Bert Powers did not lead them astray...
...It gives them a sense of dignity without which they would otherwise be lost...
Vol. 46 • April 1963 • No. 8
