Six Typists Join The Union

Six typesetters for the Typing and Copy Center who voted Wednesday to join local 300 of the Graphic Arts International Union (GAIU) have found themselves pulled into a stormy conflict that they know very little about.

The typesetters, who have never unionized before, do composition work for the Harvard University Gazette and many other Harvard departments and publications.

All of the typesetters declined this week to speculate whether they will support their new union's strike if it is still going on when Wednesday's vote is certified by the National Labor Relations Board.

"We just don't know, we'll have to wait to hear from the Union," one typesetter said Wednesday. "We don't know anything about the strike or what we're going to do," another added.

On Wednesday, Harry Pollack, a supervisor for the company that prints the Gazette, said that if the typesetters strike he would stop printing the Gazette because "our employees are under GAIU and we just can't handle struck work."

Pollack altered that assertion yesterday, saying that he will print the paper if it is brought to him in its usual photo-ready state--even if the Copy Center typesetters are on strike.