Is It Still a Union Town?

When Rupert Murdoch bought the New York Post in 1976 he launched his new product with a declaration that New York was “a newspaper town again.” The Newspaper Guild, under pressure to grant Murdoch wage and work rule concessions, responded by distributing buttons declaring, “New York: A Union Town Still.” The implicit defensiveness of that move— a major union has to remind people that this is a union town?—underlines the state of labor in New York. Even here, in one of the cradles of American unionism, there has been both serious erosion and a dramatic shift in the base and nature of union power.

To be sure, the Guild’s button emphasized what is still an important truth: for all its economic...