By: E&P Staff Guy DeVito, a vice president of the Graphic Communications International Union, succumbed to emphysema on June 9. He was 80 years old.
DeVito was involved in the newspaper industry since 1947, when he returned to his hometown of Chicago after fighting in World War II as a gunner on a B-17 bomber. He worked at the Chicago Daily News? pressroom and later moved to the position of business agent, and became an officer of the Stereotypers Union, which represented platemakers. This would prove to be the beginning of a life-long devotion to the unionized members of the newspaper industry.
By 1962, DeVito left the pressroom of the Daily News permanently, and began to dedicate all of his time to the union. In 1980, he became vice president of the International Printing & Graphic Communications Union. Under DeVito?s guidance, the union successfully merged with the Graphic Communications International Union soon after.
Through his work, newspapers such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune were able to avert strikes by their pressmen. The case of the 1985 Chicago Tribune strike was an exception, however, and one that caused DeVito personal anguish. The strike by the Tribune pressmen lasted four years, and many of the strikers never returned to work, including some of DeVito?s friends.
DeVito?s son Terry told the Pioneer Press (Minn.) that his father ?believed a strike was the last resort.? However, ?the advent of the new corporate philosophy of the 1980s [caused DeVito to feel that] the unions were pushed up against the wall.?
?He once told me, ?We may reach the bottom of the barrel but we?re going to scrape the sides going down.??
DeVito is survived by his wife Jean, whom he first met when he was 13 years old; his sons Terry, Daniel, and David; his sister Nancy Mohigh; four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
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