Great Falls Newspaper Guild

The Great Falls Newspaper Guild held its first recorded meeting on March 22, 1936. Fred Martin and Joseph Kinsey Howard were among those who organized the editorial employees of the Great Falls Leader and the Great Falls Tribune as the Great Falls Press Club. The existence of the Guild was initially secret. Like the American Newspaper Guild, which was founded in 1933, they organized in response to the working conditions common for newspaper reporters: long and irregular work hours with no paid holiday or vacation, poor benefits, and dismissal without cause. The Guild affiliated with the Cascade County American Federation of Labor (AFL) and was officially named the Great Falls Newspaper Guild (Local 81 of the American Newspaper Guild). On November 29, 1936, the guild negotiated its initial contract with the Great Falls Tribune-Leader owners, O.S. Warden and Alex Warden. Other early members were Dan Cushman and Charles M. Guthrie. One of the issues the Guild took on in early negotiations with the Wardens was the gender-segregated wage scale that paid women considerably less than men for the same work; the Guild felt strongly that there should be a single wage scale for all reporters regardless of gender.

Initially the Guild included only editorial employees, and it quickly established a closed shop, where all non-management employees at the newspaper had to belong to the union. In 1937, the Guild established alliances with craft unions and farm and labor organizations outside the paper, and through a threatened strike with the typographical union, established its power with newspaper management. By 1939, the Guild added personnel from the advertising and circulation departments, and later employees in the business office. Until 1968, it was the only newspaper guild between Minneapolis and western Washington and kept its pay scale higher than other Montana newspapers. Also in 1939, employees at the Great Falls Tribune, the Great Falls Leader, the Montana Farmer-Stockman, and the weekly Treasurebelt News . were included in the Guild's contract. All had a five-day, 40-hour week, vacation, reimbursement for travel expenses, and equal pay for men and women.

During World War II, federal wage and production guidelines slowed the Guild's efforts to improve its member's wages, and its gains were mostly limited to improving benefits. These included protection of the jobs of employees serving in the military. The Guild attempted to unionize other Montana newspapers, especially those owned by the vast and powerful Anaconda Company. Organizing the Anaconda newspapers--most of the major newspapers in the state--had been one of the Guild's early goals. Organizing was done in secret and was never successful. Wages and benefits in Great Falls outpaced those at other papers considerably, and many reporters and other staff left Company papers to work for the Tribune .

The relationship between the Guild and the Tribune 's leadership was mostly peaceful during the 1940s and 1950s; neither side employed professional negotiators. Alex Warden replaced his father as publisher after O.S. Warden's death in 1951 and continued to be reasonable in negotiations. But negotiations became more difficult in the 1960s. By 1962, both the newspaper and the Guild began to use professional negotiators as the stakes became higher. Also at this time, the Guild began to feel the division between its well-paid reporters and editors and the less-well-paid employees of the buisiness, circulation, and advertising departments. Most of the Guild's leadership was from the editorial side, and it felt the split keenly.

In April 1965, the Tribune and the Leader were both sold to the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, a strong American Newspaper Guild paper that was owned by John and Gardner Cowles of Minneapolis. The new owners honored the union's contract, and the Guild was relieved that the paper had not been purchased by Lee Enterprises, which had purchased the Anaconda Company's Montana newspapers in 1959. The late 1960s were contentious as the Guild and management struggled over the closed shop, pay, and benefits.

In the late 1960s, the Guild renewed its efforts to organize other Montana newspapers, especially the Lee papers, but made little headway.

Negotiations between the Guild and management, contentious for some time, came to a head in 1972. The Guild was frustrated in its efforts to improve wages and benefits, and prepared to strike. In October 1972, the Guild and the Tribune signed a two-year contract, retroactive to 1971, that boosted pay and benefits.

But by 1973, inflation drove Guild members to seek more pay increases. Carla Beck, the union's first woman president, observed that while the Guild had won equal pay for equal work some time ago, most of the Guild's women members were in low-paying "pink collar" jobs, and that the wage separation between college-educated editorial staff and support staff was only growing. They sought to repeat the successes of newspaper guilds in larger cities, which had secured substantial pay increases. They were unable to negotiate them, and the strike began on October 19, 1974. The International Typographical Union (ITU), which represented the Tribune's typesetters and composers, and which considered the Guild a rival, attempted to break the line but was physically unable to cross. They decided to support the strike, along with many other local unions, and effectively shut down the Tribune .

Tribune management also took advantage of the shutdown to convert its presses from old--and labor-intensive--"hot type" to more modern "cold type," which eliminated many jobs for typographical union members. By November 1, some of the Guild's own members made the decision to break the strike. From there, the strike became more and more divisive. The Guild published its own paper, the weekly Great Falls Pennant, starting November 9 to continue to serve Great Falls readers and advertisers during the strike. It was frustrated as it sought a printer, finally having to use a printer in Billings. Readers in Great Falls and along the Hi-Line missed their daily paper. Local television and radio stations expanded their local coverage, but were unable to fully fill the need for local news.

On December 17, the ITU local voted to return to work, and by December 19, using management trained on the new equipment and a private fleet of delivery vehicles, the Tribune produced a paper, effectively defeating the Guild. Members, disappointed at the outcome, voted to accept management's pre-strike offer and returned to work on December 21, 1974.

Relations between the Guild and the Tribune continued to be rocky for several years following the strike. Guild membership also began to fall, and it gave up the closed shop in 1978 when it at last signed another contract with the Tribune . The strike also ended the Guild's efforts to organize other newspapers in Montana.

On December 16, 1992, Guild members voted 47-25 in favor of discontinuing the organization's representation of them in contract negotiations with the Tribune . The union effectively ended its existence in Great Falls in 1993.

From the guide to the Great Falls Newspaper Guild Records, 1934-1993, (University of Montana--Missoula Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library Archives and Special Collections)