The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-08-27
Book-PubIishing Field
Offers Many Problems
For Union Organizers


sisted on by the publishers. Err
rand boys, learners" office girls
and inhabitants of smaller towns
to receive the SIS minimum.
A 35-hOur week as against the
40-hour week proposed. Forty
eight hours Of tolerance as against
the "a hours proposed.
Time and half for overtime as
against time and a third.
Two weeks vacation made man
datory wherever tolerance period
is worked.
The book shop offers still an
other problem. There are four gen.
eraI types of book shop: ID lending
libraries, % book shops dealing
exclusively in new and rare books,
(3) secondhand book shops, and
ca department-store book shops.
While few shops have staff of
more than ten workers, the ma
| jority of book shops have but one
or two. And large lending library
chain, like Womrath's has many
stores but no concentration of
workers in any of the shops. This
makes the problem of organization,
of developing shop committees, ex-
tremely difficult.
Throughout the book-shop bust
ness, working conditions are at
distress point Wages, especially in
the smaller shops and in the chains,
are extremely low, hours are long,
physical conditions intolerable, and
provisions for lunch hours and
other essentials for health COM
pletely unsatisfactory.
Magazines
The magazine industry offers the
greatest opportunity, for the time
being, but also the greatest diff
culties. For, while there are ra-
dicalized intellectuals in the pub
fishing business to open a few doors
in the publishing industries
and while the physical conditions
of book shops make it possible to
approach employees, in the larger
magazines no such conditions exist.
The white-collar tradition of vol
untary wage slavery, because of the
supposed prestige of office jobs, re-
mains somewhat in force.
However, the opportunities af-
forded in the magazine industry
counterbalance the difficulties and
are acting as a spur to the activ-
tiles of the Union 1t is in the
magazines that the largest num-
bers of workers are concentrated.
The Literary Digest, for instance,
employs easily thousand office
workers. McCall's magazine en-
ploys over three hundred Moreover
there are magazine chains issuing
a considerable number of maya
zines which employ hundreds of
office workers doing every category
OF office work, from stenography to
large-scale mailings.
1t IS among these large aggrega-
tons of office workers that the
union plans to direct activities. Pre-
liminary surveys show that the
workers are ill-paid and are sub
jected to exhausting speed-up. A
few contacts have already been
made and these contacts are work
ing to produce activity.
The Section was founded some
time near the end of April when,
as result Of an action in a pub
fishing house, the office Workers
Union was appealed to for help.
Since the majority of the en-
ployes of three other firms were
already members of the Office
Workers Union, 1t was decided to
organize a separate Literary Trades
Section around this nucleus. Today
the Section has members in thirty
five publishing houses. book shops,
and magazines and, in spite of
hot summer that has made work
; after office hours difficult and re-
duced attendance at meetings, the
work is progressing.
Perhaps the outstanding event in
the career of the Section was the
successful strike-the first in the
history of the industry-at the
Macaulay Company, which received
tremendous amount of publicity.
1t is characteristic that the strike
should have occurred in a publish
ing house that offered probably the
least cultural advantages to its
workers, SO that the disillusionment
OF the workers was there furthest
III, 1T L