Bert Powers, 84, Headed Union Of Typographers

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The New York Sun

Bertram A. “Bert” Powers, 84, the president of the old typographers union in New York who led his guild through a grinding 114-day strike in 1962–63 over the transition to automated typesetting, died Saturday in Washington. He had pneumonia.

The strike, the longest and costliest in New York history, was often credited with bringing sharp reductions in the number of daily newspapers in the American press capital. As a result, it brought Powers national attention and likely marked the start of a technological revolution in a business that had not changed in years.

The bow-tie-sporting Powers, once described by a New York Times labor reporter as “honest, clean, democratic — and impossible,” was elected president of the New York Typographical Union no. 6 in 1961.


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