Dangerous Labor

ONLY a New Yorker would be so presumptuous as to analyze a strike at a Big Apple tabloid with a view to obtaining insights into the future of American organized labor. New York is by no means a typical American city; its newspaper publishers are by no means typical American employers; and its newspaper craft unions are by no means typical American trade unions.

Irritating though it is for a non—New Yorker to admit, Richard Vigilante—formerly a columnist for New York Newsday and a resident of Queens, recently made executive editor of Regnery Publishing in Washington—has pulled it off with his absorbing and perceptive analysis of the strike that shut down the New York Daily News from October 24, 1990, to March 20, 1991. His account of this quintessentially New York labor dispute not only catalogues the profound changes in skills and work habits that microchips and robotics are demanding of industrial workers throughout the nation, but it also defines the challenge that rapidly evolving technology presents to American organized labor.

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About the Author

Guy Hawtin

ONLY a New Yorker would be so presumptuous as to analyze a strike at a Big Apple tabloid with a view to obtaining insights into the future of American organized labor. New York is by no means a typical American city; its newspaper publishers are by no means typical American employers; and its newspaper craft unions are by no means typical American trade unions.

Irritating though it is for a non—New Yorker to admit, Richard Vigilante—formerly a columnist for New York Newsday and a resident of Queens, recently made executive editor of Regnery Publishing in Washington—has pulled it off with his absorbing and perceptive analysis of the strike that shut down the New York Daily News from October 24, 1990, to March 20, 1991. His account of this quintessentially New York labor dispute not only catalogues the profound changes in skills and work habits that microchips and robotics are demanding of industrial workers throughout the nation, but it also defines the challenge that rapidly evolving technology presents to American organized labor.