Previously cutting-edge expertise. iStock/Getty Pictures Plus
Can a seemingly sturdy labor union merely collapse? The information is stuffed with tales about rising union energy – however simply because a union is robust now doesn’t imply it’ll keep that approach. Essential unions have put themselves out of enterprise earlier than. The Worldwide Typographical Union, or ITU, is one such instance. As soon as it was among the many nation’s most important unions, however it disappeared in only a few many years.
I’m a enterprise college professor who’s fascinated by the teachings of the ITU – first, as a result of I train programs about unions, and second, as a result of I inadvertently participated within the ITU’s demise. However extra on that later.
Greater than only a ‘sizzling labor summer time’
Proper now, union leaders are feeling highly effective.
Greater than 360,000 staff have gone on strike in 2023 – practically 3 times as many as in all of 2022. The United Auto Employees union is at present putting towards Detroit’s Large Three and demanding a 36% pay hike. UPS not too long ago agreed to union calls for for a beneficiant new contract, beneath which essentially the most senior drivers will finally earn about $170,000 a yr. Hollywood was shut down by the screenwriters’ and actors’ strikes.
Nevertheless, union leaders can be sensible to not overplay their fingers. The typesetters guild boasted greater than 100,000 members at its peak. At this time it serves as a cautionary instance of how rapidly union energy can erode.
A quick digression: What’s typesetting, anyway?
Our story begins within the 1500s with the invention of the movable-type printing press. Employees known as typesetters would take particular person blocks of letters and organize them into strains of textual content. They might retailer unused letters in two instances: capital letters in an higher case and smaller letters within the easier-to-access decrease case. That observe – which is why English audio system nonetheless describe letters as “uppercase” and “lowercase” – can be ripe for disruption just a few centuries later.
A typesetter’s largest concern was letters falling out when placed on the printing press. To stop this, all strains have been made justified, or the identical width, so textual content might be locked into an oblong body. Being an excellent typesetter demanded bodily abilities to maneuver blocks of sort rapidly. It additionally took mind, since typesetters acted as de facto proofreaders and structure designers.
An early American union
Quick-forward just a few hundred years. U.S. labor unions began choosing up steam after the Civil Conflict, and typographers have been fast to unionize, since their excessive literacy ranges helped with organizing. They fashioned the Worldwide Typographical Union in 1852 with greater than 1,000 members.
Thirty years after its founding, the ITU confronted a significant technological shock. In 1886, the inventor Ottmar Mergenthaler was granted a patent for the Linotype machine. This machine allowed operators to pick characters by typing them on a keyboard as a substitute of choosing them from a kind case.
The Linotype’s benefits have been rapidly evident. A talented operator might set 6,000 characters per hour, many occasions sooner than a hand compositor. The Linotype additionally didn’t require blocks of letters to be re-sorted into sort instances after materials was printed. As an alternative, strains of sort might be melted down and reused.
The Linotype and competing machines didn’t harm the union as a result of it made publishing cheaper, which resulted in a burst of printing. In actual fact, ITU membership elevated as new newspapers, magazines and e-book publishers sprang up, all of whom wanted expert staff who might take handwritten copy and remodel it into printed textual content.
By the beginning of World Conflict I, ITU membership was over 60,000.
The union’s membership peaked within the Sixties, with newspapers being the largest employers of ITU members. Newspaper publishers didn’t just like the ITU as a result of it meant they needed to pay for 2 completely different costly workforces: the reporters who created the content material and the typesetters who made that content material readable. Whereas solely among the reporters have been unionized, nearly all the typesetters have been.
The decline of the ITU
Beginning within the Sixties, different new developments like phototypesetting after which phrase processing threatened typesetters’ jobs.
The ITU fought towards technological adjustments with an enormous strike in New York Metropolis. When the strike began, New York Metropolis had seven day by day newspapers. After a 114-day shutdown, solely three remained: The New York Occasions, the New York Put up and the Every day Information.
Members of the Worldwide Typographical Union display outdoors the workplaces of The New York Occasions on Jan. 15, 1963.
Bettmann/Getty Pictures
The comparatively excessive pay of typesetters, mixed with their capacity to close down manufacturing for lengthy durations of time, made newspapers, magazines and different publishers keen clients for high-tech firms that constructed computer systems that routinely decided line breaks, hyphenation and textual content justification. These computer systems additionally saved time by eliminating the necessity for typing copy twice: first by the writer after which by a typesetter.
This second technological revolution devastated ITU membership. From 1984 to 1987, its membership halved. In 1986, it merged with the Communications Employees of America, which immediately doesn’t even point out typographers on its listing of sectors.
Strolling the negotiating tightrope
Equally immediately, unions are pushing for giant wage will increase at a time when new applied sciences pose a risk to these staff’ livelihoods. Autonomous autos threaten Teamsters truckers; robots and simpler-to-build electrical autos threaten United Auto Employees; ChatGPT threatens screenwriters.
Labor leaders stroll a superb line: Their job is to advocate for staff, however making aggressive calls for can backfire in the event that they immediate employers to extra rapidly embrace automation. In different phrases, there’s a danger that militancy immediately can destroy union jobs tomorrow.
Oh, sure – how did I inadvertently assist the ITU’s demise?
After newspapers computerized their information operations, typographers have been nonetheless wanted to create show adverts. I joined a small high-tech firm that constructed among the first software program and {hardware} that automated creating show adverts. Our techniques price tens of millions of {dollars} however have been eagerly bought by massive newspapers.
The irony was that shortly after my firm helped put the ultimate nail within the ITU’s coffin, a brand new wave of laptop firms equivalent to Apple, Adobe and Hewlett-Packard created the desktop publishing revolution. That technological change put the corporate I labored for out of enterprise.
Jay L. Zagorsky doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or group that might profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their tutorial appointment.
