Deadline at Dawn

The deadline for the strike was set for 5:30 a.m. one day last week. Yet, after three months of negotiating, neither the New York World-Telegram and Sun, biggest (circ. 600,000) newspaper in the Scripps-Howard chain, nor the C.I.O. American Newspaper Guild had entirely given up hope of averting it. For much of the night before the deadline, they had both wrangled over their "final offers." Then they wearily stopped negotiating.

Precisely at 5:30 a.m., slight, blond Ed Easton, 44, W-T & S rewrite man, finished pounding out a picture caption, shut his desk in the third-floor city room and turned in his copy. To Executive Editor

Lee B. Wood and Managing Editor B. 0. McAnney, he'waved vaguely: "Well, so long." Then Easton, who is chairman of the W-T & S Guild unit, walked out, followed by ten other Guildsmen on the slim lobster shift. By the time they left the building, a picket line of 150 was already forming. Easton picked up a sign and joined the line. The strike was the Guild's first against a New York City newspaper since the Brooklyn Eagle strike.

Tree Pruning? Soon there were 700 Guildsmen on the line. Of the 540 W-T & S employees eligible for membership, 400 belonged to the Guild; the rest of the picketers were from other New York Guild units. By 8 a.m., several hundred printers, engravers, stereotypers, pressmen and mailers had shown up for work. Although their A.F.L. and independent unions were not on strike, only a handful crossed the orderly picket line. The rest refused to cross, for fear of their "physical safety"--an explanation apparently designed to skirt the Taft-Hartley ban on secondary boycotts and to avoid violating their own union contracts.

At 1 p.m., with more than 1,000 of the day's editorial and mechanical crews absent, Executive Editor Wood admitted defeat. He announced that the W-T & S would not publish that day. For the first time in Guild history, it had succeeded in shutting down a struck New York paper. The big points at issue were job and union security and wages. The Guild wanted the right to arbitrate any "economy" dismissals, and a virtual Guild shop, i.e., nine out of ten eligible employees must be Guild members. Management refused to arbitrate, and offered to maintain the existing proportion of Guild membership. The Guild also asked wage increases ranging from $4 (for those earning less than $60) to $10 (for those few earning more than $175). Management offered $2 to $5, to bring the top minimum wage to $113.50 after six years of service. As in many strikes, the real issue was more intangible: the fear of many W-T & S staffers that Scripps-Howard, which bought the Sun only last January, might soon start a wholesale pruning of its biggest tree (1,600 employees).

Making Hay. On the strike's fourth day, the Guild started paying weekly benefits ranging from $25 to $80 per striker (depending on size of family). Some idle mechanical workers signed on as extra hands at other evening and morning newspapers, which were making advertising hay while the World-Telegram and Sun was behind the strike cloud.

At the W-T & S, news wires were turned off. Eyeing the nearly deserted city room, Scripps-Howard Veteran (30 years) Lee Wood, in red, white & blue bow tie, said sadly: "There's no use getting mad.' We're going to have to work with them when they come back--if they ever do. And I hope they do. We had a pretty good staff here." But this week neither side yet seemed in a mood to settle.

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