Unions: Newsmen v. Printers

Once again the International Typographical Union flexed its muscle and forced a publisher to back down. After weeks of trying to install a computer that would cut costs and increase the speed of typesetting, the New York Post’s Mrs. Dorothy Schiff said that her paper could not meet the “enormous tribute” demanded by the local I.T.U. boss, Bertram Powers. The union insisted on a 50% share in wage savings, but Dolly Schiff balked at any payout so long as the Post is financially rocky—and she chucked the computer.

Not only New York publishers are alarmed by the I.T.U.’s defiance of automation. Almost equally worried is a brother union, the American Newspaper Guild. If more papers are forced to shut down, editorial staffers will have a hard time finding jobs—a much harder time than the typographers, who can be absorbed by print shops outside the newspaper business.

Riding Piggyback. Relations between the two unions have long been uneasy and lately have further deteriorated. Jurisdictional disputes have flared as both unions have vied to organize proofreaders, stencil clerks and driver-mailers. The Guild refused to honor I.T.U. picket lines at three Toronto dailies last year and helped break the strike. In retaliation, the I.T.U. crossed the Guild’s picket lines at two Hearst newspapers in Albany and helped break that strike; last May, after the Guild struck the Baltimore Sun, I.T.U. President Elmer Brown ordered his printers back to work.

The I.T.U. has accused the Guild of “riding piggyback” on the I.T.U. Said Elmer Brown: “The Guild cannot close a single newspaper by striking alone.” On the eve of the I.T.U. convention in Washington two weeks ago, top officers of the typographers and the Guild met to try to patch over some of their differences. About all they accomplished was to agree vaguely to strive for better communication between the unions and to meet again this month. Meanwhile, the Guild unit at the New York Times has voted to strike if a “satisfactory” contract has not been reached by Sept. 12; the Herald Tribune and Journal-American Guildsmen have also voted to strike but have not set a date.

Monastic & Monolithic. It will not be easy to settle a dispute between two unions that differ widely in tradition, temperament and tactics. Basically, the oldest union in the newspaper business is pitted against the youngest. The 113-year-old I.T.U. looks down on the 32-year-old Guild as an upstart. The I.T.U. is a world unto itself, a “monastic and monolithic world,” in the words of one top labor arbitrator. All its members work at essentially the same job, tend to share the same interests, see each other socially. The union provides almost cradle-to-grave security: a training center, a retirement home, generous pensions, burial expenses.

The Guild enjoys no such cohesion. A so-called “vertical” union, it embraces all sorts of employees, from editorial writers to janitors, who have little contact with each other. Though newsmen tend to champion the union movement in theory, they are hard to organize—as are most white-collar workers. Restless by nature, newsmen are generally unwilling to submit to the discipline of a union shop. Few Guild contracts call for a full union shop, but almost all I.T.U. contracts do. While the Guild has helped to raise the general salary scale, its “minimums” have tended in fact to become “maximums,” and many employees are leveled on the same scale.

Devouring Junior. Both unions give lip service to the idea of merging with each other. But many officers of the 30,000-member Guild realize that if they were to merge, their union would be swallowed by the more militant, disciplined, 120,000-member I.T.U. Says New York Guild Executive Vice President Thomas Murphy: “The I.T.U. thinks of merger as a return to Father’s house.” As matters stand, the Guild will have a tough time influencing the typographers to accept automation in hope of preserving some editorial jobs.