The Defeat of the Strikers

Exactly one year after it began, the eleven-union strike against the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner is technically a stalemate. Publisher George R. Hearst Jr., 41, grandson of the crusading William Randolph, still directs a staff of strike breakers inside his boarded-up building. Behind other barricades just a block away, some 50 strikers still gather each day to dispense food and subsistence checks, plot strategy and pounce hopefully on every rumor of Hearst's troubles. Actually, the strike is over--and the clear winner is George Hearst.

Hearst has accomplished exactly what he set out to do: break the local unions. Even before the American Newspaper Guild and the Machinists' Union struck for modest pay raises last December, Hearst had 150 out-of-town strikebreakers on salary, waiting in local motels. His concern was not salaries but union resistance to automation. He had powerful local support from the beginning. Otis Chandler's nonunion and increasingly automated Los Angeles Times, a bit beset by federal antitrust action, feels more comfortable with a rival around. For a time, it helped Hearst print his strike-bound paper. Mayor Sam Yorty, a Democrat of sorts, put city hall on Hearst's side. "I think the unions should get wise to themselves," he said. "They're putting the newspapers out of business." More important, the city's big businessmen stuck with Hearst. Although the paper sold about 22% less advertising space, most of the major advertisers ignored union pickets and protests and continued to place sizable ads.

Heavy Costs. Hearst's victory was not cheap. Strikers followed carrier boys on their routes, noted houses taking the paper, later claimed to have talked 125,000 subscribers into canceling. They persuaded 200 news dealers to stop selling the paper, smashed hundreds of Herald-Examiner vending machines. In all, circulation dropped from 730,000 to 540,000, at a cost to Hearst of about $2,000,000. Advertisements for the year slipped about 7,000,000 lines behind the year before, a loss of at least $7,000,000. Hearst was forced to lower his ad rates, probably losing another $7,000,000. But by cutting its staff from 2,200 employees to 1,200, the paper saved about $4,000,000. The net loss, after adding the cost of vandalism, severance pay and guards' salaries, was about $15 million. Since the Herald-Examiner has been making some $15 million-a-year profit and since circulation, ad linage and ad rates are all starting to rise again, Hearst might even wind up slightly in the black this year, despite the strike.

The cost to the newspaper unions was even heavier. They have now been knocked completely out of the major dailies in the nation's third most populous city. Of the original 2,000 strikers, 1,600 work at odd jobs only two days a week and therefore qualify for strike benefits, which have cost the unions $10,000 a week (pressmen get a minimum of $25 a week, printers and mailers $103). The other 400 have taken full-time jobs, many at smaller newspapers, where pay is often lower than at the Herald-Examiner. Affected families display signs in their home windows: HEARST HURTS THIS HOUSEHOLD.

Real Losers. For the strike breakers, by contrast, life is growing almost comfortable. The early tenseness, in which they refused to venture out for lunch for fear of being beaten by pickets, has eased. Once so shorthanded that columnists had to wind computer tape and deskmen had to help set type, the staff now works almost normal shifts.

"We don't think of ourselves as scabs any more," says one sports reporter. "We just think of ourselves as part of a nonunion newspaper." He concedes that the paper is now a shoddy one, but has a point in claiming that "it always was."

The real losers in the strike may prove to be the Los Angeles newspaper readers. They can still enjoy the features for which they long bought the Herald-Examiner: its syndicated columnists and its sports department, which is back to full staff. The overall quality of the paper is slipping, however, and unless Hearst uses the savings made possible through automation to hire a more professional and dedicated news staff, the decline may eventually disenchant the habitual readers. The crucial question still to be answered is whether George Hearst is as interested in a good paper as he is in a profitable one.

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