Former Guild president Charles Perlik Jr. dies

Reprinted in entireity from the New York Times, September 20, 1948

By DENNIS HEVESI
Charles A. Perlik Jr., who as president of the Newspaper Guild from 1969 to 1987 took liberal stands on issues like the rights of minorities and women in journalism, died Wednesday in Falls Church, Va. He was 84 and lived in Springfield, Va.

He died of natural causes, said his wife, Marion.

As the leader of a union that now represents more than 33,000 reporters, editors and photographers around the country, Mr. Perlik took positions that sometimes led to controversy.

During his tenure, the union appointed a human rights coordinator to work toward guaranteeing equal rights for minorities and women in the news industry. While leading the Guild, Mr. Perlik was also the North American vice president of the International Federation of Journalists and played a prominent role in the federation’s support for journalists’ unions in poor countries. In 1984, he was one of several labor leaders arrested in Washington while protesting apartheid in South Africa.

Mr. Perlik came under criticism in 1972 when, for the first time since its founding 40 years earlier, the Guild endorsed a presidential candidate, Senator George McGovern, Democrat of South Dakota. Then, in 1983, a similar controversy arose when the union backed former Vice President Walter F. Mondale in his unsuccessful run against President Ronald Reagan.

While some members of the Guild expressed concern that such endorsements called journalistic impartiality into question, Mr. Perlik said, in 1983, “We should not surrender our right to speak out on issues of such consequence.”

Charles Andrew Perlik Jr. was born in Pittsburgh on Nov. 13, 1923, a son of Charles and Theresa Perlik. After working on the school newspaper at West View High, Mr. Perlik began studying journalism at Northwestern University. World War II intervened, and after serving in the Army in the Pacific, he returned to Northwestern, where he received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism.

Mr. Perlik’s first job was as an $18-a-week copy boy for the International News Service. He then worked in Chicago for United Press. In 1950, he became a reporter for The Buffalo Evening News, and three years later he was elected president of the newspaper’s Guild local. He began working full time for the union in 1957.

Besides his wife, the former Marion Ford, Mr. Perlik is survived by two sons, Paul and Stephen; a daughter, Lesley; and eight grandchildren.

Mr. and Mrs. Perlik met in 1948, when both were reporters for United Press and she was a Guild representative.

“When he got a 25 percent raise, he thought he was pretty good,” Mrs. Perlik said on Friday. “Then, unfortunately, I had to tell him that it was a Guild-negotiated raise. We used to say that our marriage was union-made.”

[Photo from the Northwestern University Alumni Association Hall of Achievement. See item.