A Moderate Employers’ Association in a “House Divided”

Howard Stanger brings a broad temporal perspective to Columbus employers in the printing industry and their varied strategies regarding activism. Here he makes the case for how employer activism did not always lead to an ability to counter unionism. Columbus printers made a collective decision to recognize unions for the first part of the twentieth century, and then later made a collective decision to initiate a campaign to counter unions. This counter-campaign benefitted from the long praxis of anti-unionism in other parts of the country, facilitated a vigorous belligerent drive against them based on strategies learned elsewhere, and in other industries.