Challenging the Strike Record

When 110 American Newspaper Guildsmen struck the Youngstown, Ohio, Vindicator last August, chances were that they did not even consider the possibility of setting an endurance record for newspaper walkouts. All they wanted was to bring certain part-time circulation personnel under the Guild contract. But by last week, Youngstown's stubborn Guildsmen were well on their way to earning an unenviable title for forcing the longest shutdown in U.S. newspaper history.

Since 1939, the title has belonged to Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where a Guildsmen's strike against the three dailies then being published gagged the papers for 174 days. That performance was improved by the Guild in 1954, when it shut Wilkes-Barre's Record and Times-Leader Evening News for 181 days. Until Youngstown, second-place honors were held by Springfield, Mass., where a typographers' strike closed the jointly published Daily News, Union and the Republican for 144 days in 1946-47.* Youngstown's strike, which has forced the paper to produce a limited edition available only at the plant, has now passed Springfield's: it entered its 152nd day at week's end. And although bargaining negotiations have been resumed after months of apartness, neither side shows much disposition to yield. Management and labor, said a Guild spokesman, were still "far from settlement."

Even if Youngstown's Guildsmen hold out long enough to cop the national title, they will have to go some to unseat the North American champions. On June 4, typographers struck Montreal's La Presse, a French-language daily that is the city's biggest (circ. 253,607). Having come to terms with the strikers, La Presse went back on the newsstands at the turn of the year--just 214 days after it stopped publishing.

* Also-ran: New York City's 144-day newspaper shutdown two winters ago; a pressmen's strike against Detroit papers that ended in November after 134 days.

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