Press: Seattle Strike

Last June the American Newspaper Guild officially became a Labor union by voting to join the American Federation of Labor. Guildmen hoped this step would enlist the active support of newspaper mechanical departments, other unionized groups, in their next strike. Last week in Seattle, for the first time since its birth in 1933, the newsmen’s organization succeeded in closing down a major newspaper with a strike. That the suspended paper, the Post-Intelligencer, was the property of the Guild’s No. 1 enemy, William Randolph Hearst, made the Seattle strike a notable milestone in the Guild’s career.

Chartered last May, the Seattle Guild had 36 members in the Post-Intelligencer city room. Last month Publisher William Vaughn Tanner fired 225-lb. Head Photographer Frank (“Slim”) Lynch and Dramacritic Everhardt Armstrong, active Guildmen. When the Guild protested, Publisher Tanner declared he had ousted the photographer for “inefficient management,” the writer for “gross insubordination.”

Last week the Seattle Guild’s demand for the reinstatement of Lynch and Armstrong was refused. The Seattle Central Labor Council promptly announced that the Post-Intelligencer was “unfair to organized labor.” The Guild ordered its membership out, claimed 40 newsmen from the Post-Intelligencer’s staff of 68 answered the strike call. A picket line around the publishing plant was formed, aided by the redoubtable Teamsters’, Loggers’ and Longshoremen’s unions. Careful to explain that they “were not on a sympathetic strike,” the Post-Intelligencer’s typographical men simply refused to pass through the tough picket lines to & from work.

Though he might have issued some kind of sheet without a full reportorial staff, Publisher Tanner gave up when his printers stayed away. After five days of non-publication, the Post-Intelligencer declared: “Whether this newspaper ever resumes publication is up to this community.” A Regional Labor Board hearing was called for Sept. 8.

Meanwhile, Seattle citizens had no regular morning paper.