Newspapers: A Concession to Dolly

The essential reasons for the 3½-month-long New York City newspaper strike in 1962-63 and the essential reasons for current merger talks among several of those newspapers come to pretty much the same thing. The publishers need desperately to cut production costs through automation. But they are bedeviled by a powerful, medieval-minded printers’ union local whose attitude towards automation ranks roughly with the intellectual attainments of a mystery cult. Last week the union, in its misguided zeal, very nearly ran one of the publishers out of business.

Fold It? The target was the liberal afternoon New York Post (circ. 337,556). Publisher Dorothy (“Dolly”) Schiff, 62, who has been increasingly concerned over the paper’s financial condition, installed a punch-tape IBM computer that can automatically prepare edited copy at the rate of better than 2,000 lines an hour—theoretically ten times faster than a journeyman Linotypist. After experimenting with it on a dry-run basis, Mrs. Schiff last week ordered the machine into operation. The union balked, and Bertram Powers, single-minded president of the International Typographical Union Local No. 6, laid down his demands. His men would refuse to operate the machine, insisted Powers, until there was an agreement with Mrs. Schiff to share wage savings from the computer operation on a fifty-fifty basis with the union.

Mrs. Schiff and Powers argued it out in the composing room. At length, she turned to the crowd of printers. “Are you with him or with me?” she cried. The printers stood mute. With tears in her eyes, Publisher Schiff turned away, and minutes later ordered the Post shut down until further notice. That night, she declared that unless the union backed down, she would either sell the paper “or fold it forever if nobody wants to buy it.”

Gulp. Intermittently through the next day, Mrs. Schiff and Powers, whom she thinks of as a friend, hashed out their dispute with the help of Labor Mediator Theodore W. Kheel. Powers persisted in his demand for an equal sharing of all wage savings realized by the automation process, while Dolly stubbornly argued that she would not share savings in any year in which the paper failed to make a profit. At length, as the principals wrangled in her East Side Manhattan apartment, Publisher Schiff the astute business woman became Dolly Schiff the wronged woman. “It’s obvious,” said she, “we cannot reach an agreement. I am going to resign as publisher.”

“What does that mean?” gulped Bert Powers, envisioning 280 jobless union printers.

Mrs. Schiff explained that this was her 26th anniversary at the Post. “Maybe,” she mused, “I’ve been around too long and it’s time for me to go.”

Printer Powers looked as if he had been hit in the face with pi. He regarded Mrs. Schiff as a warm supporter of trade unionism, and said that he hoped she wouldn’t resign. After all, she is “very important to the New York scene.”

High Marks. In a little while, Mrs. Schiff broke the embarrassed silence, reached for the phone to schedule a press conference. That made Powers think that perhaps there was something he could do, and he offered what for him was a major concession. The Post could use the computer for a week’s run of newspapers, during which time the union and the Post management would try to work out an acceptable automation formula.

Next day, the Post was back on the stands with two of its 72 pages set by the computer. Mrs. Schiff’s problems were by no means solved, but her fellow newspaper publishers, long held over a barrel by Bert Powers, gave her high marks for determination. Recalling her climactic conversation with Powers, one man who observed the negotiations marveled: “Only a woman would have tried that. It was a very good feminine ploy.”