Forty Years Later, Gary Goff and Henry Foner Reunite in the NYLHA

Work History News, January 2008

If you are looking for a human interest story, you can find one here, in the ranks of the New York Labor History Association. Here's how it all came about:

In 1970, Work History News Editor Henry Foner was heading the Joint Board Fur, Leather & Machine Workers Union. He was asked by the workers at Harper & Row Publishers, who were organized but unaffiliated, to represent them in their negotiations with the company. When he learned that New York's publishing industry was almost entirely unorganized, he persuaded his own union to undertake the job of organizing them. However, before they could issue their first leaflet, Barney Rosset, the head of Grove Press, fired three of his editors because he suspected them of being responsible for the organizing campaign. To add to the irony of the situation, Grove Press and Rosset had reputations as mavericks in the book publishing industry, having published, for the first time, the works of such authors as Henry Miller and Allen Ginsberg.

Rosset may have been a maverick, but he was not about to sit by while his editorial workers organized the industry, and so the union's first struggle became one of getting the three workers reinstated. Among the union's strongest supporters was a young worker named Gary Goff. It was a weird campaign: not only was the union involved in trying to win a Labor Board election to represent the editorial workers, but it was also mobilizing them for the anti-Vietnam war marches that were very much on the agenda at the time. To get idea of the situation, when the union challenged Rosset to a debate at one of its meetings, he accepted and upbraided the union for not "doing enough for the revolution."

During contract negotiations, the union was able to guarantee that, whatever the outcome of the election, it would be able to arbitrate the discharges. When it lost the election by a small margin and Rosset expected it to fade into the woodwork, it redoubled its efforts to win the arbitration and get the workers back on their jobs.

The arbitration itself contained enough drama to be made into a movie. One of the company's charges against a discharged employee was that she had gone into Rosset's office at the end of the day and written graffiti on his walls. To bolster its case, it brought in the world-renowned handwriting expert, Harold Osborne, who blithely testified that the graffiti matched the handwriting of one of the discharged employees. The union's brilliant attorney, Harold Cammer, sized up Osborne perfectly. After eliciting the latter's modest admission that he was probably one of the foremost handwriting experts in the world, Cammer asked him quite innocently if his testimony had ever been challenged. What happened next could only be compared with the famous scene in the movie, The Caine Mutiny, in which Humphrey Bogart goes to pieces in a similar incident. The arbitrator quickly dismissed Osborne and ordered the workers reinstated to their jobs.

Now — fast forward for almost half a century. Foner, by now retired and editing the Work History News, receives word that a British film company is filming a documentary on Barney Rosset and wants Foner to tell the story of his dealings with the noted publisher. At the same time, he learns from another union publication — the Public Employee Press — that Goff is now the vice-president of one of New York's municipal employees' unions. As a result, Goff has (1) agreed to join the New York Labor History Association, and (2) volunteered to include his statement in the Rosset documentary.

All that is needed now to round out this fascinating story is the disclosure of the name of the person who wrote the graffiti on the walls of Barney Rosset's office. Foner and Goff are both sworn to secrecy, so don't expect to read it here.

Reprinted with permission
(Work History News is the newsletter of the NY Labor History Association.)