History of the Newspaper Guild

Page 2

Citizen-News management was unable to withstand the daily spotlight of negative public opinion and soon capitulated. LANG’s first strike, declared an unqualified success, sparked a drive for contracts and for organizing elsewhere.

Those initial contracts raised journeyman reporter scale from a paltry $35 per week to an incredible $55. Guild members became the cream of the Southern California journalism community.

Efforts to obtain a first Guild contract at the Los Angeles Examiner met with stiff resistance from Hearst management. As part of its anti-union strategy, an opposition “company union” was formed and Guild members who refused to join were fired. The local Labor Relations Board offered to reinstate the fired Guild members; only one returned but quit later after management harassment. Others took jobs at other LA newspapers rather than return to the Examiner. Most believed the Examiner never did have an active union presence in the newsroom but when the Examiner folded, the Herald Express then became the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and took on many of the Examiner staffers who promptly became Guild members.

During those early years, contracts were negotiated peacefully with publishers of the Daily Racing Form, Garden Grove Evening News, The News-Times, News-Advertiser, Huntington Park Signal and the San Pedro News-Pilot. Important contract provisions, in addition to wages and working conditions, were the union shop, dues check-off, health insurance and pension plans.

During the 1940s, workers at the Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram (later it become today’s Press-Telegram) joined the Los Angeles local and with it came more leadership strength that included Loel Schrader, Dan Parker, Terry Satoria, Gil Bailey and George Laine to name a few.

Publishers learn Guild no paper tiger

However, not all publishers agreed to Guild demands without clear demonstration of union strength. LANG’s first major strike was against Hearst at the Herald-Express. The company had changed its policy from meaningful negotiation to one of stonewalling on union demands. In 1946, the company forced the Guild into a 13-week strike before agreeing to the terms of a new contract. After three months without its reporters, editors, photographers, drivers, district managers and others, Hearst capitulated.

But Hearst brought the Guild to a strike situation again in 1966. The one-day dispute set the stage for the 1967 strike, which sadly, eventually produced the death of Hearst’s national flagship publication.

Following the 1966 walkout, Herald Examiner publisher George Hearst, Jr., announced he would get rid of all the unions in his plant. He stalled contract negotiations for nine months until all nine unions set deadlines authorizing strike action if necessary to reach agreement on a new contract. Hearst imported a crew of strikebreakers (scabs) from various parts of the country, set them up in hotels and motels near the Herald Examiner. But the move failed to dissuade LANG members or members of the other unions and the entire staff went out on strike on Dec. 15, 1967.

The Herald Examiner missed only one day of publication but was immediately afflicted with a terminal illness that would last twenty-two years. In 1967, the Herald Examiner boasted the largest circulation of any afternoon daily in America, with an ABC-endorsed figure slightly in excess of 750,000 paid subscriptions and advertising revenue the envy of publishers nationwide. But the strike produced a downfall that was both immediate and catastrophic.

With the support of the unions’ international leadership, staff and resources, along with the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the California Labor Federation and strike benefits provided for years to workers who remained on the line (others drifted away to other publications at better wages and in better conditions), the union’s advertising and circulation boycotts took their toll: the newspaper’s circulation plummeted 400,00 in the first year and declined each year thereafter.

Twenty-two years after it declared war on its staff and suffering continuous losses in earnings, advertising lineage and community prestige, Hearst finally folded the newspaper in 1989.

The loss of 1,200 members at the Herald Examiner was a near-mortal blow for Los Angeles Newspaper Guild Local 69.

Next Page