Labor Wars: A Cease-Fire at Pioneer Press
Management wasted little respect on the union negotiating team. “They were leading us by the nose,” pressman Pete Wagner would remember. Wagner, a late addition to the Guild team, said that a company negotiator sneered at one point, “You don’t even have 30 percent membership! How can you ask for anything?”
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Finally, the rank and file awoke. A membership drive soon added another 25 or so names to the checkoff list (which the company now ignored). And thus fortified, the Guild marched to the National Labor Relations Board and charged Pioneer with various unfair labor practices, especially refusing to bargain.
The company position that it didn’t have to bargain has since been rejected at virtually every legal turn. Last August, an NLRB judge found Pioneer guilty on all counts. Last January, U.S. District judge Suzanne Conlon ordered Pioneer to go back to the bargaining table.
The Guild took the usual escalating steps. In early April, as Pioneer unveiled a new design for its papers, the editorial unit waged a two-day byline strike. (One of the reasons it was called off is that some readers took the absence of bylines to be an element of the new design.) An informational picket line was
It helped that Dale and Strimbu had built up credit with each other over the years, especially during the ’88 Sun-Times negotiations, when Dale also interceded at the 11th hour. And Guild leaders like Robinson sense the practical hand of Sam McKeel being raised to restore order.
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