1936 Seattle Post-Intelligencer strike

In August 1936, employees of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer went on a three-month strike, causing newspaper production to cease for the duration of the strike. The strike was sparked as a result of two senior staff members being fired for forming an alliance and joining The Newspaper Guild.

Background

The owner of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was William Randolph Hearst. Hearst was born in April 1863, and by the 1920s, a quarter of all Americans were reading a paper that was owned by Hearst. He also owned an International News Service and six magazines including Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping. He later owned a television newsreel and a film company and once considered running for the President of the United States. Hearst is credited as a founder of yellow journalism by utilizing sensationalism or crude exaggeration in his publications. The most famous example of Hearst's yellow journalism was prior to the Spanish–American War. He consistently published articles about ongoing conflicts between the Spanish and the Cuban Revolutionaries, which was credited for laying the groundwork for the Spanish–American War. Hearst's "combat dispatches" turned out to be correspondents at luxury hotel resorts whose sources were their imagination.

During the first World War the city of Seattle worked as one fifth of the United States wartime ship tonnage. A shipyard strike in 1919 garnered national attention to the city of Seattle when workers went on strike to keep their high wartime wages which led to the general strike from February 6–10, the longest general strike in American History. The strike fueled American fears of radical and socialist values. This general strike gave Seattle a reputation as being at the heart of political radicalism. When the great depression came to Seattle in the 1930s "Hoovervilles" started popping up around the city where nearly 1,000 unemployed would gather to stay in shacks at the empty shipbuilding yard south of Pioneer Square. When the World War II came about it created an economic bounce back at the shipyards and The Boeing Company increased employment by more than 1,200.

The American Newspaper Guild was founded in 1933 and led by a columnist named Heywood Broun. The main reason for the founding of the union was that traditional independent editorial workers were upset with their pay. In 1936 the Guild became affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Unions in 1937 (two of the largest unions organizations in America).

The Strike

In August 1936, thirty-five of the approximately seventy employees from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer went on strike. Employees who went on strike were members of the American Newspapers Guild. Management at the paper found that a few of the veteran members of their staff had joined the Newspaper Guild Union and were fired as a result. The strike stopped publication of the newspaper from August 20 to November 29.

Three members of the Newspaper Guild were among the most highly active during the strike: Everhardt Armstrong, Richard "Dick" Seller, and Frank Lynch. Armstrong gained a lot of hostility from management at the paper largely because he was a respected and experienced reporter who showed sympathy for causes of labor. Seller was a younger reporter who shortly after getting married became reassigned to the "night police beat". This assignment was typically given to young and single reporters who were somewhat carefree. Seller joined the strike with the Newspaper Guild later but ended up becoming the president of the Seattle chapter of the Guild. Lynch was the chief photographer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer whose department was seen as being disorganized and was fired once the management from Hearst Corporation when it was discovered he was a member of the American Newspaper Guild Union.

David Beck was another key figure in the strike. Beck was an organizer for the Teamsters and had responsibilities all along the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia and later the entire West Coast. Strikers gathered attention while picketing outside the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and garnered attention from workers in the surrounding area. One group of those workers came from the waterfront and joined in the picket lines surrounding the building. Beck and the Teamsters then decided to refuse to drive past the picket lines preventing the newspapers from being delivered.

William Hearst became more willing to make a deal with the union strikers once the pro labor, Roosevelt became re-elected to office. A tentative agreement was made and the P-I employees returned to work. Shortly after the end of the strike William Hearst hired Franklin Roosevelt's son-in-law, John Boettiger, as the publisher to the paper. David Beck was the person who brokered the deal between the two sides as the most influential member of the Seattle Central Labor Council. This victory allowed Beck to increase his influence and give him a strong reputation as Seattle's premier labor leader. Beck also used this to help him in becoming the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and to serve as chair of the UW Board of Regents.

During the strike the employees of the Post-Intelligencer printed a separate paper of their own: The Guild Daily. It came to print on August 14, 1936, and sold 20,000 copies on its first day. By the end of its run it had more than 60,000 readers. The news it covered included the strike, world news, and local sports news.

The 1936 strike against the Seattle PI was the first time in Seattle history that a newspaper staff went on strike. This was the first successful strike for the Newspaper Guild and one of the first instances of white-collar workers holding a successful strike, while building a reputation that Washington State laborers had power.