History | Officers

THE BUFFALO GUILD: A UNION HISTORY- page 1
By Mike Vogel

page 1 - 2 - 3 - 4

Nearly half a century apart, they represent votes of hope and votes of desperation; out of one was born a union, and from the other was born one of unionism’s most dramatic moments in a strongly union town.

Those who met to form the Buffalo Newspaper Guild in 1934, in answer to Heywood Broun’s call for strength among journalism’s laborers, began a process of struggles, trials, defeats and victories that continues today. And the legacy they left for the Guildsmen and Guildswomen of today brought both victory and defeat in a single moment, just before that half-century milestone was reached.

In 1982, the Guild unit at the Buffalo Courier Express voted its own demise, rather than sacrifice union principles; its refusal to accept destructive compromise in both work and journalistic standards ensured strength in the Guild’s remaining major Buffalo unit and bequeathed to it a mandate for quality and solidarity.

Ironically, both votes, for union life, and union death, were cast in the same building, the Hotel Statler, and each involved a kind of courtesy, ending one organization to provide strength for another.

Nearly 50 years earlier, Broun issued the call for unionism through his New York newspaper column, and in nearby Cleveland newsmen responded with the first local of what soon become a national Guild.

“The fact that newspaper editors and owners were genial folk should hardly stand in the way of the organization of a newspaper writer’s union,” wrote Broun in that 1933 column.

The time was right for unionism. A government survey showed that one of every five reporters earned less than $20 per week, and hours were long and irregular with two of every three newspaper workers getting neither extra pay nor comp time for overtime. It also showed thatone of every eight newspaper workers had no vacation rights, and that paid holidays were rare and dismissals were both frequent and arbitrary.

“The fact that newspaper editors and owners were genial folk should hardly stand in the way of the organization of a newspaper writer’s union,” wrote Broun in that 1933 column.

Broun’s call found willing listeners. At the Press Club in Buffalo, the handful of active members caught the spark of enthusiasm he kindled and began talking union.

The Press Club, an informal name carried over from an older social club, had a roster of 200 members but only about 15 were still active as 1934 dawned. As they began thinking Guild, there were arguments that the new organization should have a fresh start but there also were arguments that the fledgling union could benefit from the club’s roster of names and its quarters in the Hotel Statler.

On a Sunday afternoon, Jan. 21, 1934, the Press Club held its last meeting and the Buffalo Newspaper Guild was born.

40 year anniversary booklet.

Interest in the new union was evidenced by the voter turn-out; 116 persons, including 48 from the News, voted in that first election. On Feb. 19, 1934, the new organization took another major step; just over two months from the Dec. 15 meetings in Washington that had formed the American Newspaper Guild, the Buffalo local applied for its charter from the national body.

On March 20, 1934, the Newspaper Guild of Buffalo received charter number 26 from the ANG, signed by Broun as president.

Buffalo had a Guild on paper. For the first few years, though, that paper didn’t include anything that looked like a Guild contract.

It took three years for the union to bear fruit, in the form of the Guild’s first contract with a Buffalo newspaper. On May 17, 1937, the Guild and the Buffalo Times agreed “to set up mutually agreeable hours, minimums and other working conditions; to reserve all those elements of newspaper publishing that safeguard an independent press; and to establish the principle of collective bargaining between management and editorial employees of the Times.”

There were no provisions for protection against arbitrary firings, for insurance, for grievance procedures, for pensions; there were landmark agreements for salary “steps’” from $22.50 to $42.50 per week in three years, for two weeks’ vacation after two years’ service, for compensatory time off for overtime, for a five-day, 40-hour work week.

Just five years later, Scripps-Howard’s tabloid Times folded. Guild secretary Arthur P. Reed Jr. wrote “Brother Broun” a note of appreciation for the Guild’s telegram of condolence. The Buffalo Guild had lost its only Guild shop.

With $71.69 in the Guild treasury in the summer of ’42, president James Wessel sent sign-up petitions to staff members at The Buffalo News. A Guild women’s auxiliary was formed and a Guild blood donors’ drive was held, and two ANG organizers came from Washington to work with the News and Courier-Express staffers.

	Among the first motorized delivery trucks at The News.

Strategy meetings were frequent, at the old Hotel Worth near the Main and Seneca home of the Evening News. When Wessel was drafted into the Army, Nat Gorham took over the Guild presidency and the organizing campaign. The Guild declared it represented a majority of News editorial employees, and on May 11, 1943 the National Labor Relations Board held an election at the News.

There were tensions in the newsroom in the days before the election; the NLRB warned News executives to stop anti-Guild activities, and a quickly organized move to form a company union failed to meet a deadline for inclusion on the ballot. The Guild won the election by a slim 65-69 margin.

Negotiations got under way, with the Guild winning severance pay gains, overtime pay, night differential, maintenance of membership and a freeze on pay cuts and dismissals during the term of the contract.

page 1 - 2 - 3 - 4