History of the Newspaper Guild

70 Years of struggle, success

Note: This is a work in progress, our recent history is still being compiled, and should be available soon.

The American Newspaper Guild was founded in 1933 as a union of newspaper workers organized through the efforts of Heywood Broun and fellow journalists. Newspaper back shops remained the sacred provinces of the International Typographical Union (America’s oldest labor organization, now also part of the CWA), and other crafts. The Guild became the first successful union for writers. It has since organized other editorial employees as well as advertising, circulation, business workers in newspaper, broadcast and online companies.

The Los Angeles Newspaper Guild (LANG) Local 69 was chartered January 9, 1937, as a local of the American Newspaper Guild (changed to The Newspaper Guild when locals from Canada and Puerto Rico joined). On June 20, 1997, LANG merged with the Guild’s parent union, the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

Now known as the Southern California Media Guild-CWA, the local represents eligible employees working at the Long Beach Press-Telegram, LA Daily Racing Form, LA Daily News and SEIU Local 99.

In the beginning …

As the twentieth century dawned, a wave of union organizing was spreading across America.

But in Southern California, the Chamber of Commerce, the Merchants and Manufacturers Association and the Los Angeles Times, then the very private property of General Harrison Gray Otis, were very active in maintaining LA as an “open shop” city.

Union organizers were active, too. They petitioned San Francisco Examiner owner William Randolph Hearst to establish a newspaper in Los Angeles that would operate with a union staff and would furnish competition to the well-established but very anti-union Times. Hearst opened the Los Angeles Examiner in November 1903.

Labor organizing in Southern California was slower than in other regions of the country until the 1930s, when Congress passed the Wagner Labor Relations Act, which afforded union organizing certain protections.

When Associated Press reporter and officer of the New York Guild local Morris Watson was fired by the AP in October of 1935 for what it called “unsatisfactory work”, The Wagner Act was put to an immediate and positive first test. The National Labor Relations Board backed Watson, ruling that union activity was the real reason for the discharge. The AP moved the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the company’s action was found to be retaliation for Watson’s attempt to organize a Guild local in San Francisco. The Supreme Court ruled that Watson could not be fired for union activity and ordered AP to reinstate him with back pay.

The decision emboldened other union-minded newspaper staffers to organize their own workplaces. In late summer of 1936, a handful of journalists, determined to create a Los Angeles Guild local, met secretly (the Court decision hadn’t yet been handed down) to discuss poor working conditions and low pay. They signed temporary cards (pending recognition by the national union) and quickly signed up 25 others.

By December of that year, four of the five Los Angeles metropolitan papers indicated their fear of the Guild after only four months of its existence. Membership had passed 100 and the companies were worried. Suddenly they issued across-the-board pay raises: an increase of minimum wages, ranging from $60 a month for copy boys to $180 a month for editorial workers, were announced at the Herald-Examiner. The terms provided for a 40-hour workweek, with overtime to be made up by time off within three months. Other papers followed suit.

But the announcement came with a clause providing the boosts applied only to reporters, rewrite and copy desk men with five years experience at LA metropolitan dailies. The clause eliminated from the top salary scale many top-flight newspapermen with wide experience elsewhere. Intended as a blow to strike down the LA Guild in its infancy, the new salary schedules actually boomeranged for the publishers. Instead of smashing Guild sentiment the uneven salary spreads created dissatisfaction among the workers and they started to look more favorably to the Guild to work out obvious inequities.

The formative years of the Los Angeles Newspaper Guild was very hectic. The Guild demanded contracts at each newspaper, often with harrowing results. The Hollywood Citizen-News fired its chief editorial writer, Roger Johnson (pictured at left) who had been elected LANG’s first president. Johnson’s coworkers immediately voted to strike.

That first strike by the upstart union produced some astonishing results. Launched May 17, 1938 and lasting 10 and a half weeks, film celebrities joined members of the American Federation of Musicians, church, civic and labor leaders to march with Guild members on the picket line. Tea was served on the line and advertisers who refused to cancel ads were picketed. Injunctions were issued by “an all too friendly” judge to try to stop the strikers. The strike gained national attention and was covered by Time magazine.

Next Page