the Reporter is limited to allowing members on union benefits to work there with no additional salary. About 40 per cent of the members who lost their jobs in the strike work at the Reporter. The group includes thirty-seven newsmen the ITU took under its wing when the American Newspaper Guild cut off their strike benefits.
Another view of Portland
Three years have passed but the feelings of some participants still run high. The strike is still officially on and union workers still subscribing to the struck newspapers are "sowing the seeds for what could be a bitter harvest," according to a recent Portland Inter-Union Newspaper Committee leaflet. It notes the publishers "would like to see Portland become an open-shop city where workers are forced to scrabble along without the economic benefits and security of union contracts."
But the ordinary public couldn't care less. Today the Oregonian and the Oregon Journal are about as fat as ever, showing no visible effects of the strike. "The strike ended three years ago," comments one local resident....
Eliminating featherbedding, plus consolidating the two dailies, has cut "about 30%" of the pre-strike mechanical room manpower, according to square-jawed M. J. Frey, president of the Oregonian Publishing Co.
"Some newspaper unions want to be like the railway brotherhoods—freeze progress," charges one publisher spokesman. However, a news- paper union leader denies newspaper unions oppose automation and doubts the accuracy of the employer estimate on eliminating featherbedding.
However that may be, the success of continued non-union publication has been a major worry to the unions. Leaders feared the "Portland pattern," as it was called, might spread around the country. In fact, about two years later, the Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Journal successfully published 27 days without interruption when around 300 union workers of its 1,500 employes stayed off the job during a strike. However, no non-union outside employes were brought in. The union men went back to their jobs...
Tempers and violence flared in the early days of the Portland strike on both sides of the picket line. Name-calling and fisticuffs ensued on several occasions. The climax came with the dynamiting one night of 10 parked trucks under contract for delivering the Oregonian. Subsequently, a former stereotyper union employe was convicted in connection with the truck dynamiting.
Even though both sides decried the use of violence, some citizens inevitably associated the single union man's explosive act with unionism itself. One Portlander sympathetic to the union cause recalls, "I didn't like reading about dynamited trucks."The Reporter obtained stock registration in 1960 from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The offering was labeled a "speculation." The sale, at $10 a share, began on November 4, 1960. Since, more than 8,300 individuals and organizations have responded. Stockholders can be found in all states and in seven foreign countries, but a majority is held in Oregon. Ownership has also become, as The Wall Street Journal puts it, "a national cause among liberals."
Stockholders include such names as Hubert Humphrey, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and the late Mrs. Roosevelt. About 25 per cent is owned by unions. The biggest individual share is owned by Mrs. Marshall Field, the widow of the founder of an earlier innovation, the Chicago Sun.
The Reporter has learned that its lineage can affect linage. The paper must work hard to convince the business community that it is a permanent commercial entity and that it speaks with a voice independent of its parentage. Gradually it is chipping away at what appears to have been a business boycott, or at least a deep reluctance to advertise. Accounts now number more than 500 in display and more than 400 in classified. Only about ten major local advertisers eschew the Reporter.
Politically, the Reporter leans toward the Democrats. Still, it has not always supported a straight ticket. In 1962, it endorsed two Republican candidates for county commissioner, both of whom won. (Organized labor opposed both.) One of the Republicans conducted a vigorous campaign highlighted by disclosures of irregularities and cronyism in the county administration. This earned him the censure of the two Newhouse papers.
The Reporter editorial page is most often concerned about such issues as public power, civil rights, natural resources, and consumer interests. A study in 1961 of world peace through law won an award from the state's bar association. The paper is an enthusiastic booster of community projects. It has an editorial advisory board, composed of representatives from education, business, agriculture, labor, science, and the clergy.
The publisher, Webb, recently observed that the Reporter seems to be gaining support among Republican executives and Democratic intellectuals, but is
