I am one of four owners of a small prepress production company. I started out in graphic arts and prepress production as a typographer shortly after I dropped out of journalism school in the late ’70s. I’ve always lived in a city with at least two daily newspapers. Even my high school newspaper was a daily during my years there (one of only five in the country then, and I’m not sure when it became a weekly). So obviously, the news that an impending buyout/rescue of the Sun-Times Media Group is being stalled by six members of the Chicago Typographical Union Local #16 is of great interest to me.
I was never a member of the typographers union. When I joined that sector of the workforce, hot metal type was well on its way out. My only exposure to hot type and hand-set type was in school. All of my work experience was with computerized cold type. There was a fair amount of resentment about the change itself, some of which was also directed towards those who were not around during the days of hot metal. People like me, who were young, female, or worse, both.
I am not really anti-union. My family members have been part of the construction trades union, teachers union, and firefighters union, and I can think of a lot more positives than negatives that came out of their union memberships. I respect what the typographers union did to gain better working conditions for its members in its early years, the longevity of the union, and its strength through most of its lifetime. It was just not a good fit for me in 1979.
Honestly I was surprised to see that there were as many as six union typographers still employed at the Sun-Times. I had assumed that all production had long since passed into the hands of editorial, advertising, and graphic design departments armed with their trusty Macs. I am amazed to recall that the union was once powerful enough, and it was, to demand lifetime job guarantees for its members. While I do understand some of the hateful comments being directed at the holdouts, I also have to ask: isn’t a union supposed to protect its members and help them keep what they fought for? And maybe this shouldn’t make a difference, but the annual salaries of $45,000 they are fighting to keep is regular-people money. Not financial institution bailout money, not automaker bailout money, but regular-people money measured in thousands not billions. Maybe less than you… or I… make.
(NaBloPoMo | October ’09: 13 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 235 of 274)