Who's Boss in Milwaukee

For 79 years, the plump, prosperous Milwaukee Journal (circ. 383,850) enjoyed the steady serenity of labor-management peace. Other papers might be pestered by strikes, but not the Journal--and the reason seemed obvious. On the Journal, labor is management--at least in theory. Some 1,025 of the paper's 1,550 fulltime employees hold a lion's share (72 1/2%) of the voting stock; conceivably they can give orders even to Board Chairman Harry J. Grant (TIME cover, Feb. 1, 1954). "If they don't like me," Grant once said, "they can fire me." Last week, though, the Journal was struggling through the first strike in its history, and Harry Grant was still chairman. But by striking against the very corporation they are supposed to control, the Journal's working stockholders have forced a showdown on a vital issue: on an employee-owned newspaper, who is really boss?

Superficially, the Journal walkout resembled many another newspaper strike. It began when 57 mailers in I.T.U. Local 23 left their jobs, demanding higher pay and job security. When other shop unions refused to cross picket lines, the strike force soon reached 500--nearly all Journal stockholders. In the hands of a skilled labor negotiator from St. Louis, the real strike issue abruptly came clear. Even though 1,025 employees own some stock, the executives control the paper.

By his own admission, Board Chairman Grant controls the bulk of the voting stock--by proxy. And employee shares have been distributed so judiciously that enough stock remains in executive hands for effective working control. Said one stockholding striker last week: "I read that some guy upstairs got divorced and split $133,000 worth of stock with his wife. You know how many composing-room men it would take to own that much? At least 25."

In their fight for the control they figure they are entitled to, the strikers have worked the Journal into an uncomfortable and costly position. During the first few days of the strike, as the Journal dipped briefly to eight pages and forced editorial staffers into mechanical jobs. Milwaukee's other paper, Hearst's morning Sentinel (circ. 196,961), put on so much heft, circulation and new advertising that it was compelled to give many a Journal striker work. For a while, the Journal even had to borrow page mats from the Sentinel (including one theater listing that ended with the embarrassing filler item: "Sentinel Want Ads Bring Results"). Journal circulation dropped by 15,000.

By week's end, although 240 Journal men had gone back to work, the rest of the Journal's striking stockholders, enriched by their pay from the Sentinel, were in no mood to give in. "A Journal employee, stockholder or not, has no voice in management," said Negotiator Robert Ameln. "I can't help feeling that we're doing all the employees, especially our own men, a big service."

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