Can a seemingly strong trade union simply collapse? The news is full of stories about the growing strength of a relationship, but simply because a relationship is robust now doesn’t suggest it’ll stay that way. Important trade unions get out of business before. The International Typographic Unionor ITU is one such example. It was once one of the country’s most significant unions, nevertheless it disappeared inside just just a few a long time.
I’m a professor at a business school who’s fascinated by ITU lessons – first of all, because I run courses about trade unions and, secondly, because I used to be inadvertently involved in the collapse of the ITU. But more on that later.
More than simply a “hot summer of work”
Right now, union leaders feel strong.
Over 360 thousand staff went on strike in 2023 – almost thrice more as throughout 2022. The United Auto Workers union is currently on strike against Detroit’s Big Three and demanding Wage increase of 36%.. UPS recently agreed to union demands for a generous recent contract that can eventually see its most senior drivers earn about $170,000 a 12 months. Hollywood was closed after screenwriters and actors went on strike.
However, union leaders could be smart to not overreact. The typesetters’ guild boasted greater than At its peak it had 100,000 members. Today it serves as a warning example of how quickly union power can erode.
A brief digression: what’s a composition anyway?
Our story begins in 1500 with the invention of the movable printing press. Workers called typesetters took individual blocks of letters and arrange them into lines of text. They stored unused letters in two cases: uppercase letters in uppercase letters and smaller letters in additional accessible lowercase letters. This practice – that is why English speakers still describe letters as “Uppercase and lowercase letters” – just a few centuries later it will be able to split.
The typesetter’s biggest concern was that letters would fall out after being placed on the printing press. To prevent this, all lines have been justified, i.e. of the same width, the so-called text can be enclosed in an oblong frame. Being a very good typesetter required physical skills to maneuver blocks of type quickly. It also required intellect, since typesetters served as de facto proofreaders and layout designers.
Early American connection
Let’s move forward several hundred years. Trade unions in the US have begun to realize momentum after the Civil War, and typographers were quickly form trade unions, because their high level of literacy helped organize. They created the International Typographic Union in 1852 with over 1,000 members.
Thirty years after its founding, the ITU faced a significant technological shock. In 1886, inventor Ottmar Mergenthaler obtained a patent for the Linotype machine. This machine allowed operators to pick characters by typing them on the keyboard moderately than choosing them from the case.
The Linotype’s benefits quickly became apparent. Qualified the operator could set 6,000 characters per hour, again and again faster than manual composer. Linotype also didn’t require re-sorting the letter blocks into fonts after printing the material. Lines as an alternative type can be melted down and reused.
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Linotype and competing machines didn’t harm the union since it made publishing cheaper, which caused the printing explosion. In fact, ITU membership increased with the emergence of recent newspapers, magazines, and book publishers, all of whom needed expert staff who could take handwritten copies and turn them into printed text.
At the starting of World War I, ITU membership was over 60,000.
Union membership peaked in the Sixties, and newspapers were the largest employers of ITU members. Newspaper publishers didn’t like this ITU since it meant having to pay two different expensive staff: the reporters who created the content and the typesetters who made the content readable. Even if only some reporters belonged to trade unionsjust about all typesetters were.
The collapse of the ITU
Starting from the Sixties other news as photocomposition and then word processing threatened the work of typesetters.
The ITU fought against technological change with: mass strike in New York. When the strike began, there have been seven each day newspapers in New York. After a 114-day downtime, only three remained: New York Times, New York Post Office and Daily news.
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The relatively high salaries of typesetters, combined with their ability to suspend production for long periods of time, meant that newspapers, magazines and other publishers willing customers for high-tech corporations that built computers that routinely determined line breaks, hyphenation, and justification of text. These computers also saved time by eliminating the have to type text twice: first by the writer and then by the typesetter.
This the second technological revolution devastated ITU membership. Between 1984 and 1987, membership dropped by half. In 1986 it was merged with the Communications Workers of Americawhich today it doesn’t even mention typographers in your sector list.
Walking a negotiating tightrope
Similarly today, unions are pushing for big wage increases at a time when recent technologies threaten the livelihoods of these staff. Autonomous vehicles pose a threat Truck drivers; robots and easier to construct electric vehicles are a threat United Auto Workers; ChatGPT threatens screenwriters.
Union leaders walk a tremendous line: Their job is to advocate for staff, but making aggressive demands could backfire if it prompts employers to adopt automation more quickly. In other words, there may be a risk that today’s militancy could destroy union jobs tomorrow.
Oh yes – how did I inadvertently contribute to the downfall of the ITU?
After newspapers computerized their news operations, typographers were still needed to create display promoting. I joined A a small high-tech company who created some of the first software and hardware to automate the creation of display promoting. Our systems cost tens of millions of dollars, but were eagerly purchased by major newspapers.
The irony was that shortly after my company helped put the final nail in the ITU’s coffin, a brand new wave of computer corporations reminiscent of Apple, Adobe and Hewlett-Packard created desktop publishing revolution. This technological change led to the bankruptcy of the company I worked for.
