The Press: Guild Victories

After a seven-year siege, the C.I.O. Newspaper Guild last week stormed the defenses of the New York Times, captured the right to bargain for 587 employes of the editorial and news departments. Its victory was no Blitzkrieg either in speed or in decisiveness. In a tense Labor Board election the Guild licked the A.F. of L. American Newspaper Writers Association (editorial employes only), 295-to-2O2.

Exultant at capturing the largest U.S. editorial staff (1,309), the Guild proclaimed its victory a death blow for craft unions representing editorial employes only. Members of A.N.W.A. retorted that only 70 Guild votes came from strictly editorial staffmen, and inferred that, barring stenographers, stockroom boys, morgue clerks, etc., Times editorial employes actually preferred a craft union—or at least were against the Guild’s pink leadership—by three to one.

Far less publicized last week was another Newspaper Guild victory—the signing of a first contract with the Communist Daily Worker. As slow to sign as the bourgeois capitalistic Times, neither did the Daily Worker set a new record for Guild wage scales. It contracted to pay its editorial comrades a minimum of $25 a week.