Some 2,500 workers went on strike July 13, 1995, against the Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press, and the Detroit Newspaper Agency, which prints and distributes both papers. Newspaper employees had been working for three months under expired contracts, but walked out when management declared negotiations at an impasse and began unilaterally imposing their own terms, which included the elimination of hundreds of jobs, increased workloads, contracting out work, replacement of full-time employees with part-timers who would be ineligible to join the union, and merit pay raises for reporters instead of across-the-board increases.

Prior to the Teamsters' vote, members of the International Typographical Union, the Graphic Communications International Union, and the Newspaper Guild had each approved contracts with the papers.

The Detroit newspaper strike drew the attention of the labor movement throughout the United States with its massive Saturday night picket lines, joined by unionists from throughout metro Detroit and many other cities, which several times delayed shipment of the Sunday paper or forced the newspaper companies to go to great expense to get the paper distributed.

The unions filed complaints of unfair labor practices against the newspaper companies with the National Labor Relations Board at the beginning of the strike. The proceedings before the NLRB and various courts stretched across the entire five-year period of the dispute. On Feb. 14, 1997, the newspaper union officials made an unconditional offer to return to work. The companies responded to the unions' offer by agreeing only to put the former strikers on a preferential callback list, to be returned to work alongside replacement workers as openings became available.

The last major action in support of the locked out newspaper workers took place on June 21, 1997, when tens of thousands from many different states converged on Detroit for an AFL-CIO-sponsored rally. Two days earlier, a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled that the newspaper companies had engaged in illegal labor practices and ordered the newspapers to immediately take back all the locked out employees. The companies refused to comply and appealed the decision. The various rounds in the legal battle stretched out for another three years, until the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., ruled in favor of the newspaper companies last July.

The contracts approved by the unions follow a similar pattern: A 2 percent wage increase each year after the first year of the contract, possible bonuses of up to $3,000 based on increased circulation of the papers, and imposition of the antiunion "open shop." Guild members have a different pay agreement, with most newsroom employees at the News eligible for only merit pay increases and those at the Free Press eligible for merit increases on top of their 2 percent annual raises.

According to approximate figures given by the Free Press, 240 strikers crossed the picket line during the walkout, 200 were fired for picket line activity, 800 retired or found other jobs, 560 have been recalled since the return to work offer, 364 declined a job offer when recalled, and 185 remained on the recall list as of December. In the course of the strike, the newspaper bosses eliminated about 700 jobs.

The newspaper companies report they lost $100 million during the strike. Circulation of the daily papers dropped from 900,000 before the strike to 603,097 as of September 2000 and Sunday circulation has gone from 1.13 million to 748,383, although not all of that slide was necessarily due to the unions' boycott, which has now been lifted.

Chuck Guerra is a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 876 in Detroit.  
 
 
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