On this day in 1936, 35 journalists employed at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer initiated a three-and-a-half-month strike. It began as a protest of the paper’s decision to fire two longtime newsroom workers as punishment for joining the American Newspaper Guild.
The Post-Intelligencer is owned by the Hearst Corporation, which, at the time, was considered the nation’s most influential publisher, but was also notorious for its anti-unionism and anti-communism. Hearst was especially hostile toward the Guild, and forbade the Seattle workers from joining it.
During the strike, the paper was shut down, and the workers set up their own, the Guild Striker (later called the Guild Daily), which became popular among other workers who supported the strike. That paper sold 60,000 copies a day by the time the strike ended.
On November 25, the strike officially ended, and the Post-Intelligencer resumed publication four days later, finally allowing its workers to unionize.
Photo: The Guild Striker, later called the Guild Daily, was established by the very workers who led the strike against the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. University of Washington Labor Press Project.
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