Our Common Past 
By Fred Rasmussen 

It was a cold, late-winter Sunday afternoon, when some 45 newsroom people gathered on March 11, 1934, in a room at the Lord Baltimore Hotel on Baltimore Street, to lay the foundation of what eventually grew into the Baltimore Newspaper Guild. 

Against the backdrop of the deepening Depression and with business off, Sunpapers' management cut employee wages by 10 percent. 

Some workers were furloughed with the promise of being rehired when business conditions improved. 

Journalists at the Hearst-owned Baltimore News were worse off. They were asked to accept pay cuts of up to 19 percent. 

It was a restless group that gathered that afternoon to discuss establishing a union. They were motivated by the economic hardships placed on them by the very newspapers they had worked for. 

photo by Amy Davis 
 
Sun reporter Rafael Alvarez, with arms raised, marches under a banner of solidarity with other Guild members during the 1987 strike.

 Dan desouza, president of the recently formed Washington Newspaper Guild, addressed the group, as did John Milligan, chairman of the Washington Times Guild Unit. Col. Beverly Ober, executive officer, first division of the National Recovery Administration, which had been created by Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal administration, said a few words. 

At the conclusion of the meeting, the group selected James F. King of the Baltimore Post interim presi- 
dent with Thomas M. O'Neill, of The Evening Sun, as temporary secretary, and with 35 signing Newspaper Guild membership cards. 

Meeting again on March 26, 1934, in the rooms of the Press Club, 44 members representing The Sun, The Evening Sun, the Baltimore Post and the Baltimore News elected permanent Guild officers. Ernest von Hartz was elected president; Clinton Johnson, vice president; H. Bowen Smith, secretary; and Henry Jarrett, treasurer. The executive committee was composed of George Ruark, Robert L. Thompson and Frances Turner. 

The first action of BNG was to send a telegram to Heywood Broun, president of the American Newspaper Guild, forerunner of the Newspaper Guild, notifying him of the dismissal, on 12 hours' notice, of 30 editorial employees of the Baltimore Post, which had just been sold by the Scripps-Howard chain to the Baltimore News. Only six were rehired.

 photo by Weymann Swagger 
 
Picket lines stretch along Guilford Avenue in 1965, during the first strike in The Sun's history. 

The union was expanding, and in 1935 established a unit at the Afro-American, where nine members elected William Mitchell unit chair.  

The National Industrial Recovery Act, passed in 1933 but declared unconstitutional in 1935, mandated a five-day workweek and the Guild wasted no time pressuring Baltimore newspaper publishers to accept the plan. 

After the failure of the act, the Sunpapers was the first Baltimore newspaper to impose a six-day, 40-hour workweek. The News-Post followed a week later with a six-day, 48-hour workweek. 

While not bringing more pay or benefits, the longer workweek did bring increased union membership and activism.