April 1: The Newspaper Strike

Eight major New York newspapers appeared on the newsstands for the first time in 114 days on this date in 1963 after labor negotiator Theodore W. Kheel achieved a deal that brought an end to a strike by the Newspaper Guild and typographers’ union. The strike was quickly turned into a lockout by the publishers, which stopped the circulation of 5.7 million daily and 7.2 million Sunday newspaper copies. During this drought, The New York Review of Books was launched by Barbara Epstein and Robert Silvers, and an all-news radio format was created by WABC. Magazines also leapt up in circulation. Yet “the nation’s second biggest government,” said Milton Bergerman of the Citizens Union, “the two-billion-dollar-a-year-plus government of New York City, [was] operating in the dark, making important and even grave decisions without the benefit of full public discussion and the airing of all sides and shades of public opinion.” Theodore Kheel was the nation’s best known labor-management-government go-between who helped resolve the New York teachers’ strike of 1968 and numerous subway and transit disputes during a four-decade career. He was also active as a philanthropist in the Gandhi Society for Human Rights, which helped raise money for the civil rights movement, and in the environmental movement.

“The dirtiest question you can ask in bargaining is ‘What will you settle for?’ If you ask that question, you ought to resign, but that’s the question you must have an answer to. You get it by asking every question except that. What’s left over is the answer.” —Theodore Kheel