By: Mark Fitzgerald Back in late 2003, as the presidential campaign was heating up for the following year's election, Bernard J. "Bernie" Lunzer told colleagues at the Newspaper Guild that he wasn't going to cut his hair "until we have a labor-friendly administration" in the White House.
"I kinda thought we were going to win that election," jokes Lunzer, the Guild's secretary/ treasurer. These days, the stocky Lunzer bears a passing resemblance to 1950s TV wrestler Gorgeous George.
The Lunzer locks were briefly threatened at this summer's Guild sector conference, during which he offered colleagues a vote on whether to keep or cut his mane in exchange for a $5 donation to the union's political education fund.
According to an account in The Guild Reporter, Guild President Linda Foley immediately bought $100 worth of votes in favor of a haircut, but the final vote was 124 to 88 in favor of keeping the Hair-style hair.
Lunzer tells E&P that all he wants is a White House that will fairly enforce labor laws and be "vigilant" about newspaper industry antitrust issues. "We'd like to work more cooperatively with publishers," he explains. "We think they need us, and we certainly need the profitability of the newspaper industry."
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