BY JOHN SARGE
DETROIT - "This is a union town; if they break us here,
they'll go after us everywhere," declared Bob Wiland, one
of the 2,500 members of six unions that struck this city's
two daily papers, the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit
News, on July 13.
Solidarity with the strike is quickly showing itself. Reports from worksites across southeast Michigan indicate wide backing for the strikers, as workers refuse to read the scab paper and campaign to keep it out of their plants.
In front of the Sterling Heights printing plant, passing motorists keep up a constant wail of car and truck horns. Drivers stop to drop off food and drinks for the pickets.
The unions, organized into the Metropolitan Council of Newspaper Unions, include two Teamsters locals, the Newspaper Guild of Detroit, the Graphic Communications International Union, and typographical workers organized into the Communication Workers of America (CWA). They had been working under day-to-day extensions of a contract that expired April 1. But Detroit Newspapers, which runs the combined business operation for the two dailies, refused to extend the contract beyond July 2.
The main issue in the strike was described as "job security" by Dennis Conroy, a newspaper truck driver and member of Teamsters Local 372, as he picketed the newspapers' Sterling Heights plant. They are "not talking about money, just about getting rid of us."
Wiland, the chief steward in the press room, explained, "The companies refuse to negotiate, even though they made $640 million in 1994." In Detroit alone, Gannett Co. and Knight-Ridder, the publishers of the dailies, cleared $55 million.
The companies have announced plans to cut mailers' jobs, to reclassify newspaper carriers (now union members) as management, and institute a $100-per-month co-payment on medical coverage. The Detroit News unilaterally enacted "merit" pay for reporters just before the strike.
Local cops moved quickly to side with the employers. Within an hour of the start of the strike, three pickets were arrested outside the Detroit News building. In Sterling Heights, local cops in full riot gear attacked the picket lines to move scab trucks, arresting strikers.
The employers quickly deployed 1,200 paramilitary goons supplied by Vance International, Nation Wide Security, and Huffmaster Associates to try to intimidate workers and break the strike.
Three hundred strikers attended the July 18 Sterling Heights City Council meeting to protest the action of the cops and the use of company goon squads. Strikers at the meeting related several instances of physical harassment and threats by the private thugs.
The company is printing a joint edition of the papers with scabs brought in from across the country, but it is not being widely circulated. A number of small businesses refuse to sell the scab paper, companies have pulled ads, and many workers have tried to cancel subscriptions.
Tim Kelleher, a Detroit Newspapers vice-president, claims 1,300 of the 3,000 local carriers are still working. But workers report otherwise; in their neighborhoods they've seen two-car teams - one with a new carrier, followed by one with thugs - throwing papers onto every lawn. Furthermore, the company has not been charging distributors for newspapers.
Strikers expect a long fight, but their morale is high. As one Newspaper Guild member, a Free Press photographer, put it, "We're ready for them. They have been hammering us for six years, now it is our turn."
On July 17, more than 1,500 people turned out for a solidarity rally in front of the Detroit News. The action, made up of unionists from across the region, was addressed by local union officials, the president of the Detroit City Council, and United Mine Workers of America president Richard Trumka.
One hundred fifty people, including many local union officials, met July 27 to organize a Religious/Labor/Community Coalition to Support the Newspaper Strikers. The coalition has called for stepped up boycott activity.
The strikers are urging others to join their picket lines and cancel their subscriptions.
Union members walking the line at the Free Press report that CWA members who work for the local phone company come by to show their support during their lunch hour and that teachers, many of whom have contracts expiring this summer, are regulars on the picket lines.
"We're trying to get everyone to come out here," Conroy explained.
John Sarge is a member of United Auto Workers Local 900. Steve Marshall, a member of United Transportation Union Local 683, contributed to this article.