On October 25, 1990, after demanding millions of dollars in concessions, the Daily News locked out 2,200 workers, forcing them to strike. After 148 days on the picket line they returned with their unions intact, though the nine unions involved approved contracts that included concessions of $70 million and major job cuts. Below is an excerpt from a book titled The Eastern Airlines Strike: Accomplishments of the rank-and file Machinists and gains for the labor movement. It is from a chapter titled "Capitalism's march toward war and depression" based on speeches given by Socialist Workers Party leader Jack Barnes. This section discusses the strike against the Daily News. The book is copyright by Pathfinder, 1991, and reprinted with permission.
Since the middle of the 1980s, as resistance by the working class and unions in the United States has evolved, a pattern has emerged. Despite the difficulties, despite the blows, workers and unionists in the United States pushed to the wall by the employers' assaults have found ways to fight. Layer after layer of workers have managed to avoid simply being handcuffed, chained, and prevented from organizing to defend themselves. They have done so even when the bosses and labor bureaucrats have combined to block them from using standard union tactics that have brought victories throughout the history of the labor movement - that is, even when they are blocked from organizing union power and solidarity to shut down production.
As workers have moved into action in the face of these odds, other working people have expressed solidarity with their battles. Important experiences with rich lessons on how to forge unity, overcome divisions, and wage an effective struggle have begun to be accumulated by a small vanguard of fighters in the labor movement. These defensive efforts are waged from a position of weakness. The ranks are not in a strong enough position to push aside the current labor officialdom and replace it with another leadership that has an alternative, class-struggle strategy. Their efforts have to take place largely within the limits of the strategy imposed by this ossified bureaucracy. But this fact makes these experiences no less important as the arena where rank-and-file fighters find each other and test each other.
All this is being experienced right now as the Daily News strike unfolds in the greater New York City area.
This is a strike that began in October 1990 as one of the most cold-blooded, brutal, militarily organized lockouts by management in years. The union officialdom hoped against hope that this fight would not happen. As a result, the ranks of the drivers, press operators, and other unionized employees were forced into a fight without any preparation. The ranks have no democratic union structures through which to organize, make decisions, argue out tactics, strive for greater unity among themselves, and reach out for broader solidarity from the rest of the labor movement - in order to bring their real potential power to bear.
Management, on the other hand, was well prepared. Production never stopped. The Daily News didn't miss a single edition. It had scabs lined up months in advance to do everything from writing copy, to typesetting and printing the papers, to transporting them throughout the metropolitan area. The scabs were at their posts within a matter of minutes - together with armed thugs to go after the unions. The rest of New York's big-business media joined in the company's violence-baiting of the unions.
But then something happened that management had not anticipated. They could write the paper, print the paper, and truck the paper with "permanent replacements." But they couldn't get working people to buy it! The working class in the New York area pulled together to keep the Daily News off the newsstands. They put pressure on the owners of the newsstands they patronize not to carry the scab paper; they argue with them, try to convince them. Some of these small shopkeepers have put up solidarity signs announcing, "We don't carry the Daily News."
Workers argue with co-workers on the job and with friends and family members not to buy the paper. They've made buying the Daily News an immoral, rotten, unconscionable act for any working person with an ounce of decency, human feeling, and solidarity. Unionists have volunteered to go out and ring doorbells to urge people to cancel their subscriptions.
There are thousands of retail outlets that carry daily newspapers in greater New York. Prior to the strike, the Daily News was the second-largest-selling metropolitan daily in the country. Yet, today it's difficult to find a newsstand that carries it. This was not accomplished by centralized organization. It took the actions of tens of thousands of workers and unionists. Newsstand owners found that carrying the Daily News was considered an insult by regular customers - people they've gotten to know, made friends with, depend on for steady business. These kinds of factors play a role in labor and other social struggles, and they are having a big impact on the Daily News strike....
The Daily News strike is just the most recent example of the pattern that has emerged from the labor struggles in this country in recent years. It is an uneven pattern, one with gaps and breaks. But the pattern is nonetheless clearer today than when it began to take shape in August 1985 with the strike of the packinghouse workers against the Hormel Company and other battles in meat-packing over the following eighteen months to two years.
Since then there have been other fights.... All have been defensive in character, waged by workers pushed deeper and deeper into a corner by the employers. They've had various outcomes: some substantial setbacks or defeats, some standoffs, a few victories....
But through all these fights you can watch not just the cumulative impact of the assaults, but also the cumulative effect of workers finding ways to resist for slightly longer, or surprising the employers a bit more with what they are able to accomplish, and thus giving greater confidence to other layers of the working class who will find themselves in struggle.