Press: Strikes

2 minute read
TIME

Five years ago printers on Seattle’s three big daily newspapers suddenly went on strike, then found the management had anticipated them. The publishers had recruited strikebreakers by auto, train and plane, quartered them elegantly in downtown hotels including Seattle’s swank Olympic Hotel. The three papers did not shut down.

Last week 245 printers on the three big daily newspapers in Portland, Seattle’s sister city in the industrially restless Northwest, struck for a $9 seven-hour day, refused to arbitrate further. Instead of the classic newspaper tactics of trying to fight it out, publish a paper somehow, Portland’s Oregonian, Oregon Journal and News-Telegram just closed down. While Portlanders spun their radio dials for news, police posted in the newspapers’ plants twiddled their thumbs. There was no violence. The American Newspaper Guild is notably weak in Portland, so instead of supporting the striking printers, editorial men on the Oregonian petitioned them to “cease a policy which has forfeited our jobs. . . .”

To help untangle this mess, Harry Walker Ely, who had just stepped in as general manager of the six Northwest units of the Scripps League of Newspapers, including the Portland News-Telegram had to abruptly turn his attention from what he had thought was .going to be his big job, the Seattle Star, embattled by a six-month Guild strike.

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