First Published: Unity, Vol. 2, No. 20, October 5-18, 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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New York – The Guardian newspaper fired all six of its union art room and typesetting workers at its office here on September 14, to avoid honoring its contract with the workers’ union, the Guardian Art Room Workers Association. The Guardian management immediately contracted its work out to a nonunion shop and began to recruit scabs.
By September 18, the workers had organized a picket line to protest the Guardian’s union-busting activities.
The workers had begun organizing earlier this year in response to the Guardian’s harassment of one worker, though the Guardian held that “the workers had no right to meet as a group.” Workers told UNITY they had considered joining District 65 (an AFL-CIO union), but gave special consideration to the Guardian because they thought it was a “progressive left newspaper” whose financial problems would be worsened by the wage and medical demands of an AFL-CIO contract.
Instead, the workers formed the Guardian Art Room Workers Association as an independent union, and forced the Guardian to recognize it and sign a contract.
The Guardian responded by firing all of the union workers, and then reduced the work force from 10 to 6. Since the firings, the workers have called for mass support to put pressure on the Guardian to rehire the fired workers and end its union-busting actions.
One of the fired workers stated, “We were angry before; now we are more angry. (Their nature) is so obvious in this latest thing where they called in nonunion workers to take our jobs.”
Although the Guardian claims to be an “independent left newspaper,” it is known to be an apologist for the Soviet imperialists internationally and for the revisionists in the U.S. Its recent actions are typical of the anti-labor practices used by the capitalists and speak better than a thousand words in exposing the paper’s so-called radicalism.