The Peoria Newspaper Guild was formed on May 31, 1957, and won its first contract in 1958 after a 64-day strike over sick leave.

The founding members of Local 86 were a hardy lot, staffing picket lines in bitter winter cold while covering beats and putting out their own "Peoria Citizen" newspaper. The Journal Star could not publish during the strike because other unions at the paper observed Guild picket lines.

The strike ended in a contract for editorial and outside circulation employees, and without a sick leave penalty the union opposed.

Local 86 has not gone on strike since then, but there have been some tense times. In 1983, for instance, Guild members watched rent-a-goons march through the hallways of the newspaper during a negotiating session in the ad conference room.

The Guild faced a major test of solidarity in 1977. Its contract expired in November that year, and members worked without a contract for about a month. During that time there was no union shop. Anyone who wanted to could resign. Only a handful did, and all but three rejoined after the contract was signed.

Steve Olin, Guild president from 1981-83, got his first taste of company hardball in 1980, when a management official said union members didn't need a raise.

"There are no locks on those front doors," the official said. "If you don't like it, you're free to leave."

Still, a tentative agreement was reached after only two bargaining sessions that year.

In 1983, the company insisted on exempting almost a dozen positions from the Guild's bargaining unit. After months of on-and-off negotiations, 24 jack-booted rent-a-goons arrived. They set up a command post in the parking lot and guard shacks at the front and rear entrances of the paper, and they stayed for weeks around the clock.

Olin, who is still a copy editor at the Journal Star, remembers that Guild members refused to be intimidated. They printed tens of thousands of subscription-cancellation cards and received commitments from nearly every union in the Tri-County Area, including the UAW, to distribute them.

A strike was averted late that year. Less than two months later, the paper was "sold to its employees," Olin said.

In 1989, the Journal Star proposed wage increases less than the rate of inflation and a big increase in health insurance premiums. Guild President Bill Knight was able to rally other local unions to our cause. One of his biggest challenges was convincing the public that, although the paper was employee owned, employees had no say in how it was run.

In the late '80s, Knight remembers, "Peoria's Newspaper Guild was challenged by a feeling we weren't fairly sharing in the rewards of employee ownership, a sense that other unions set patterns we had to accept, and an insult: urine testing.

"Through community support, inside organizing and help from international labor, we strengthened our contract and improved the paper," he said.

Inside the Journal Star, the Council of (then five) Unions shared resources, including publishing a modest newsletter ("Inside Scoop") and taking action to back each other.

The Guild held its first byline strike, withholding our names from material to support Teamster drivers, Knight said. Informational picketing and other events included many employees, from sportswriters and critics to photographers and copy editors.

"In the hours before the contract expired, a rally outside the courthouse featured people from local Building Trades, Steelworkers and the United Auto Workers, and area dignitaries promising to support a settlement included Catholic Bishop O'Rourke and comedian Sam Kinison," Knight said.

"We'd prepared leaflets to take the dispute to advertisers and cancellations cards for subscribers with our pledge to ˜put out the best newspaper we can and hope no one buys it until an agreement is reached,'" Knight said.

"Our International authorized a strike, but at the eleventh hour without out-of-town lawyers, the publisher led the way to a (1989) contract that improved conditions and ensured the paper remained very good -- and very profitable."

Knight bargained two three-year contracts with the paper. He's now an associate professor of journalism at Western Illinois University.

In 1996 the Journal Star was sold to Copley Press Inc. The California-based company now wants to sell the Journal Star and six other papers in Illinois and Ohio.

Despite contract disputes, the company has paid tribute to the union's standards by consistently picking editors from among its members.

David Leitch, Guild president in 1972 and 1973, is now a Republican state representative.

Guild members can be proud of their scholarship program, established in honor of Frank Barry, the first president of Local 86. Since 1966, the Guild has offered scholarships to encourage young people interested in newspapers, first for high school students, and more recently for those going to college.

Theo Jean Kenyon, a charter member of Local 86 and its president in 1974 and 1975, is still a reporter at the paper.

"My personal belief is that the Guild has proved the backbone of the paper," she said. "It has set standards which readers have come to expect, and we provide coverage to a broad band of central Illinois communities. A company that did not care about that coverage would be a great loss to everyone."