Akron's Daily Miracle by Stuart Warner & Stuart Warner

Author:Stuart Warner & Stuart Warner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Akron Press

Memo from John S. Kight to the American Newspaper Guild. (Courtesy of Newspaper Guild Records, Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University)

Circumstances were just right in the early 1970s for the growth of Local 7. The Beacon Journal was on the journalism map after winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for its coverage of the 1970 Kent State shootings. The news-room was filling up with young reporters hired straight out of college. The Beacon Journal even ran a promotional ad touting its “Under 30 Generation” news staff in 1971. That generation had challenged authority; union activism seemed a natural fit.

Despite occasional labor turmoil in other local industries, the Beacon Journal had never experienced a strike by any of its unions. Then on May 1, 1974, the union representing truck drivers and circulation district managers, Teamsters Local 471, walked out. The guild voted to honor the picket lines. When the Teamsters threw bricks at trucks trying to leave the plant with papers and scattered nails in their path, the Beacon Journal fitted one truck with unbreakable glass and puncture-proof tires. That truck managed to haul papers to the post office for mail delivery to subscribers, effectively ending the strike after six days.

New publisher changes the battlefield

For several years after Knight died in 1981, relations remained businesslike between the guild and the Beacon Journal. But sudden change rocked the Beacon Journal in March 1986. Tony Ridder, head of Knight Ridder’s newspaper division, introduced John McMillion as the paper’s new publisher. It didn’t take long for word to spread that McMillion had earned a reputation as an aggressive cost-cutter and tamer of unions in Duluth, Minn., where he was publisher of Knight Ridder’s News Tribune & Herald.

Even so, McMillion soon earned praise in the Beacon Journal newsroom for standing up to auto dealers who temporarily pulled their ads from the paper after a story told readers how they could save money shopping for a car. He also supported the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on the attempted foreign takeover of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. in 1986. He was approachable and unpretentious, even taking part in an on-site exercise class with his employees.

But the gravy train that Local 7 had been riding for 15 years was about to be flagged to a screeching halt. The guild and McMillion would spend more than two years staring each other down in the highest-stakes contract bargaining since the union’s earliest years.

McMillion officially threw down the gauntlet to the guild in September 1987. The union’s contract with the company was due to expire on Nov. 1, and negotiating teams from both sides met to present their proposals. The guild went first, asking for, among other things, a pay increase, more time off, a bigger company contribution to the retirement fund, and a reduction in the number of newsroom employees exempt from union membership.

Then it was the company’s turn. McMillion wanted to eliminate the experience-based pay scale and replace it with merit raises only.

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