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Issue No 251—August 2006

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Issue No 251—August 2006 Re gistered by Austr alia Post PRINT POST 306-181-0004-ISSN 0155-8722 Recorder Official organ of the Melbourne Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History Issue No 251—August 2006 Proofreaders at the Age: Val Noone (p. 1) Research Corner: The role of the Communist Party of Australia in trade unions: Doug Jordan (p. 3) Research note: Fragments: John Becker’s diary and the unfolding war. Julie Kimber (p. 4) Exhibitions and Events at the State Library of Victoria (p. 7) History quiz: Recorder crossword no 1 (p. 7) cryptogram (p. 8) ASSLH Meeting Place: contact details and membership form (p. 8) Seb Prowse & Brian Smiddy at the New International Bookshop’s Big Red Book Sale (pic: Peter Love) Proofreaders at the Age Some 60 plus male proofreaders come into what is called the Val Noone Reading Room at 2.00 pm, joining some 30 day shift of mixed male and female proofreaders. Well, on both shifts, In June, at a Labour History Conference marking the 150th they are not all proofreaders. About half of them are anniversary of the eight-hour day victory by Melbourne assistant proofreaders who in that year were starting at stonemasons, I gave a paper on trade union responses to $183.40 per week rising to $189.40 after six months while technological change. Drawing on my experience as a member of the proofreaders properly so called, were earning about $30 newspaper section of the Printing and Kindred Industries Union, I more than that. related developments around 1980 to the writings of the American To earn this money, working in pairs at desks with labour activist and theorist Harry Braverman. The full footnoted high insulated sides to keep noise down, the assistants will paper is to appear in Labour History. Here is an extract read aloud about ten proofs, or galleys as they are called, per concerning my experience working as an assistant proofreader at the hour to the readers who will make the correction marks on Age. the proofs. During the shift, friendly readers will swap The classified advertisements in the Saturday edition around and read back to the assistant. After an assistant had of the Age are at the heart of this story. Let us begin at about gained some respect in the place, the same readers will let two o’clock on a Friday afternoon in the four-storey building them mark a proof for them, although they had to take the on the corner of Spencer and Lonsdale Streets, Melbourne, responsibility if some major error went through to the press. in 1977, the year that I started as a night-shift assistant Most of the work in the reading room was boring and proofreader. repetitive. A typical shift would consist of six hours’ proof A day shift of a few hundred consisting of phone- reading Classified advertisements and two hours of proof room typists, journalists, administrators, editors, managers, reading News and Features while overtime was mostly compositors, printers, proofreaders, photo-engravers, classifieds. Houses For Sale and Used Cars were the two stereotypers, galley pullers, cleaners, canteen staff, biggest categories but there were a dozen other sorts of dispatchers and so on have been working all day on classifieds. tomorrow’s newspaper and also next week’s newspapers. On Friday the night shift has come in for a couple of They will continue working until, say, five o’clock. hours' pre-shift overtime. With that, some post-shift overtime The building will soon swell to bursting point as a on Thursday (all Saturday classifieds) and taking in night couple of hundred night shift workers join the above penalty rates, a proofreader or an assistant had a modestly workforce at various stages of the afternoon. This extra effort well paying semi-skilled job. They worked a five-day week on on Friday in preparation for the Saturday Age is the climax of a six-day roster: that is, the paper came out each day except the week at the newspaper which boasted that their Saturday Sunday so the Reading Room worked every night except publication was the largest edition in the English-speaking Saturday. Readers were thus rostered off Saturday and one world of classified advertising on a single day. other night on a rotating pattern. When I started in late April 1977, the head reader, or foreman of both shifts in the reading room, who employed Recorder No. 251 RECORDER me, was Bernie Carroll, who had been president of the about to become museum pieces – no firm was making new PKIU in 1960-62. He was popular and when he died in May ones. 1986 his Requiem was well attended by reading room staff. While the linotype operators were in a way the engine On that first day, Bernie pointed out to me the round room of the place the fuel supply came from the Phone table in the middle of the reading room with spikes for Room where expert typists, all women, took down classified proofs on a rotating central shelf and carefully explained to advertisements over the telephone. They were not in the me that it was called the revising table. There, he said, printers’ union but, partly because of the printers’ craft reliable assistants worked on checking revised proofs, that is snobbery and partly because of political differences in proofs that have the corrections done. In a few years, maybe earlier decades, they were members of the Victorian five at the most, I would be eligible to do that and earn a few Printers’ Operatives Union, the VPOU. extra dollars, he said. Well, with major technological Although the Australian Printers’ Union had in the changes over the next couple of years it did not quite work 1920s moved to include semi-skilled members under the out that way. same union, still the PKIU had the strengths and weaknesses of a craft union. And also in the VPOU were the stereotypers and press hands who did the actual printing. PKIU members shared the canteen with stereotypers and the journalists and the phone-room typists and the stereotypers and press operators. However, there was on paper but dormant, a grand chapel, a combined shop stewards committee, which in the coming years would gain fresh life. Proofreaders in the newspaper industry were themselves in an exceptional category. In a classic printing house, proofreaders would be compositors who had developed the appropriate skills and who would command a compositor’s wage. (In the 1970s a compositor could be a hand compositor, a machine operator or a cold metal worker. For the PKIU it meant technically a tradesman who had completed an apprenticeship but exceptions were made). In newspapers, proofreaders were not required to be compositors and were paid less. In the Age reading room there were, as it turned out, two proofreaders who were qualified tradesmen compositors, Tom Sharland and Val Bohner. Proofreaders at the Age came from a wide variety of backgrounds and most were, like many printers, self- educated and well read. In 1977, when hot metal was still the main production method, proofreaders and their assistants were a crucial, semi-skilled ingredient in the printing of those classified advertisements which were so essential to the success of the Age. There were 59 proofreaders employed in May that year and 39 at August 1985 in addition, in each case, to a couple of staff hands. According to my union note books, 90 people worked night-shift in the Age reading room 1977-86. By 1990 proofreaders were gone. Already the proofs gave evidence of the changing technology. Some galleys of hot metal came with TTS in the header slug – a slug was a line of type, usually in 12-point Dick Curlewis, proofreader, on the picket line at the Printing and Kindred Roman capitals, with the name of the operator who set it so Industries Union (PKIU) strike with the NPA in 1975 (2 years before Val that it could go back to him and to guard against the piece Noone joined the Age). Collection Name: John Ellis Collection (Created workers slacking on accuracy. TTS stood for teletypeset, by John Ellis. Copyright University of Melbourne archives). meaning that those lines of lead type had been generated on an automated Linotype machine into which had been fed Driving the production of the printed newspaper were ticker tape generated on teleprinter qwerty keyboards. In a couple of score of highly paid typesetters working on 1977 errors in letter spacing and hyphenation occurred Linotype machines: they worked at piece rates per line of frequently in the TTS galleys. lead type they set. The aristocrats of the printing industry, Also coming in for correction were some advertising they were known as the Piece Battery, their special proofs on photographic paper, called bromides, which were keyboards were not qwerty ones, and their output was typed on the same teleprinter keyboards but the tape had known as hot metal. In their day, in the 1890s, Linotype been fed into a photographic typesetter known a Photon machines had been the new technology and had reduced the from its brand name and the output, though paper and not number of hand compositors employed by the Age from 120 from metal, was known as cold metal. Such bromides were to 44. The big change coming was that their machines were to be cut and pasted face up into make-up pages, unlike the 2 Recorder No. 251 RECORDER hot metal which was placed in reverse into a frame on by name in the union claims.
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