The Printers Rise Again

Sixteen months of off-again on-again, frustrating negotiations came to an end last week as Boston's five dailies were struck and forced to shut down. The cause of the news blackout was the same culprit that struck New York papers for 114 days in 1962-63: the printers union. Not content merely to strike, some I.T.U. members appear to have hacked up 75 pages of type in the Boston Globe's composing room at a cost of $14,000 to the paper.

As usual, the intransigent I.T.U. was at odds with the rest of the newspaper unions. Though most of the other union members honored the picket line, only the mailers joined the printers in striking. Five of the other unions had accepted the publishers' early offer when contracts ran out in 1964: a $4.10 weekly increase in health and welfare benefits in 1965; a $4.20 increase in pension payments in 1966; and no wage boost. The printers, who have a fatter pension fund than the other unions, balked. They demanded an immediate pay raise. As one printer on the picket line put it last week: "I'm only 25, and I want my lousy money now."

Last September, when the I.T.U. local asked the international for permission to strike, International President Elmer Brown stepped into the dispute and won an agreement from the publishers to extend the contract to three years, and pay a $6 wage increase the third year. But when Brown took the proposal to the local, it was flatly rejected. For their part, the publishers are reluctant to withdraw their offer, since it has already been accepted by several of the unions.

While federal and state mediators worked feverishly to end the strike, only one Boston paper--the nationally distributed, nonunionized Christian Science Monitor--continued to publish. To fill the news gap, the Harvard Crimson put out an extra four-page edition called the Boston Crimson. Cartoonist Al Capp read his own comic strip Li'l Abner over television for what he called the "culturally depraved people of Boston." Out-of-work newsmen appeared nightly on television, where they did not distinguish themselves. Reading the news in unmodulated voices with pained expressions on their faces, they stumbled over words while nervously fingering their cigars. For Boston Globe Managing Editor Tom Winship, it was one more reason to pray for a quick end to the strike. Said he: "Aren't newspapermen awful outside of newspapers?"

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