Labor Unions

Origins

The earliest known labor strike at a newspaper took place in Philadelphia in 1786 against a management plan to reduce printers' wages. But after succeeding in its aims to uphold existing wages, the union dissolved. Two New York attempts to organize printers around 1800 lasted for a few years in each case, as did several other false starts there and in other cities. Most efforts to organize centered on the control of wages and working conditions (including hours). Attempts to organize printers in multiple cities in the 1830s sputtered out in the face of firm publisher opposition and an economic downturn that made any job dear.

Only in 1848 did printers succeed in organizing in a lasting fashion, beginning in Boston, and create the National Typographers Union (NTU) in 1852. The NTU had 34 locals and some 3,500 members by 1860. It was one of only three unions (in any field) to survive the Civil War. By 1869, it had more than doubled in size (and changed the first word to International), one indicator of the expansion of newspapers across the country. Women were admitted as of 1870 (there had briefly been a separate union for them). Development of inexpensive stereotype plates in the 1870s marked one of the first “new” technologies that impacted printer employment and thus the role of their union. Introduction of the linotype in the late 1880s led to agreements on higher pay and shorter hours to allow the mechanization to continue. Operators of such devices usually became union members, and the ITU was one entity contributing to the American Federation of Labor on its formation in 1886.

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