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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 26, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Action!Motown '97--Solidarity with newspaper workers

Union labor vs. lords of the press

By Kris Hamel
Member, UAW Local 2320
Detroit

Tens of thousands of workers are expected to come to Detroit for Action!Motown `97, the June 20-21 national mobilization in support of the newspaper workers. Midwest unions are mobilizing in the greatest numbers-but labor activists are also coming from throughout the country, including both the East Coast and West Coast, to show their solidarity.

It's been almost two years since six union locals representing 2,500 newspaper workers went on strike against the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News, whose business operations are merged under Detroit Newspapers. This tremendous battle against Gannett and Knight-Ridder, the multinational media conglomerates that jointly operate Detroit Newspapers, has been characterized by remarkable determination and militancy by the rank-and-file strikers and their supporters.

Action!Motown `97 was itself a product of rank-and-file initiative. For almost a year rank-and-file strikers and supporters collected petition signatures, spoke with union locals around the country, and even lobbied at AFL-CIO Executive Board meetings to press AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and his leadership team to call a national labor march in Detroit.

After years of setbacks to the labor movement at the hand of union-busting corporations around the country-from Phelps Dodge to Greyhound to International Paper to Caterpillar-the Detroit strikers and their supporters recognized that the issue here was whether the labor movement can actually fight back against a union-busting effort by multinational corporations determined to downsize and restructure the work force.

If the millions of unorganized workers are to respond to the bold organizing efforts being launched by the Sweeney leadership, they need to see that the union movement can wage winning struggles when union-busting companies threaten the unions' very existence.

Many newspaper workers and supporters believed that the only way to fight huge corporations-which are backed by the banks and the entire capitalist class-would be by putting the whole force of the labor movement behind the struggle.

Newspaper lock-out continues

Action!Motown '97 comes at a crucial moment.

On Feb. 14 the local union leaders, at the urging of their national leaders, made an unconditional back-to-work offer. Since then, less than 10 percent of the union workers have been called back.

Of these, most have been put to work at part-time jobs at reduced pay, with no union protection whatsoever-and made to work side by side with the scabs who replaced them during the strike. They are kept under constant surveillance by 150 cameras spread throughout the News building.

Returning workers assigned to the circulation department have been fired for refusing to read a statement announcing that the union boycott is over-it isn't-and encouraging new subscribers.

In the meantime, the companies lie to the public. The bosses claim "the labor dispute is over" and "all the workers are back on their jobs."

What is true is that the companies have lost hundreds of millions of dollars since the strike began on July 14, 1995. Despite their propaganda effort, circulation is still one-third less than pre-strike levels. This proves that broad support for the boycott of the newspapers continues.

The union leaders are banking on a favorable ruling in their Unfair Labor Practice cases against the Detroit Newspapers. They are counting on the National Labor Relations Board seeking and winning a 10J injunction.

Such an injunction would order the newspapers to take back the locked-out workers and oust the scabs. It would also hold the newspapers liable for full back pay for any workers not restored to existing jobs effective Feb. 14.

The Detroit office of the Labor Board has come out in favor of seeking the 10J injunction. But the Washington office, which will ultimately decide, has been stalling.

Even if the board does seek an injunction, there is no guarantee a federal judge will issue it. Knight-Ridder and Gannett executives say they will fight in court as long as it takes to get their way.

Meanwhile, the Detroit Newspapers have fired over 200 workers for picket-line "misconduct" or other activities, including on-the-job activities since they were called back. There are more firings every day. These workers would not be covered if the 10J injunction is obtained.

Most workers know that neither the Labor Board, with its Clinton and Bush appointees, nor the court is an independent or objective body. Both are arms of the capitalist government. They represent the interests of the business class. They only rule in the workers' favor when the struggle forces them to.

Long-time political prisoner and former Black Panther Geronimo Pratt, recently released on bail after spending 27 years in prison on a frame-up, knows it well: Justice for workers and oppressed people is won on the streets.

Decisions by courts and government agencies reflect the struggle. They don't determine it.

The first message to Clinton, the Labor Board, the courts and the companies is that all locked-out workers must be returned to their jobs immediately. The scabs must be ousted. And the labor movement will continue to support every locked-out worker, and continue paying them strike benefits, until that goal is won.

There's more to the message that Clinton and the class he serves must hear: The fight won't end once all the workers are back on their jobs. Labor will continue the struggle until union contracts for all the newspaper unions are negotiated.

Big 3 vs. unions

Detroit-a birthplace of the CIO and the modern labor movement-is at a crossroads. The situation here typifies what nearly two decades of capitalist restructuring and anti-labor attacks have done throughout the country and in most of the world.

Fifty years ago, because of the victories of the union movement, Detroit was considered the high-wage center for workers worldwide. The bosses were determined to wrest greater profits by weakening the power of the labor movement-particularly the strength of Black workers, who constituted the militant center of the union movement in Detroit.

So in 1979 the corporations-led by Chrysler, General Motors and Ford-began to deliberately and consciously dismantle the city's industrial base. Half of all jobs in Detroit were eliminated in a 20- year period. Along with the layoffs came concession contracts, pushed through by the auto bosses' threats of more layoffs-which kept coming anyway.

Today, Detroit is the poorest city in the United States.

Over 26 percent of the population is on public assistance.

Forty-seven percent of Detroit's children live in poverty. The Clinton/Gingrich/Engler attacks on welfare, food stamps and other social benefits are deepening this devastating poverty.

Meanwhile, GM, Ford and Chrysler have made record profits over the last few years.

After depriving an entire generation of jobs in the city, the capitalist class now sees Detroit as a potential site for investment-but not with the decent-paying union jobs that once characterized the city. Now the ruling class wants to turn Detroit into a "Third-World city," with temporary jobs, low wages, no benefits and so on.

Although the Detroit newspaper struggle is in another industry, in many ways it is part of the 20-year restructuring offensive begun by the auto industry- essentially aimed at beating down the working class in a labor center.

Action!Motown `97 is a way to send a message that the unions and community are also determined to rebuild Detroit. Labor's agenda, however, is to restore the city to its proper place as a center of decent wages and union jobs. A victory in the Detroit newspaper struggle would help spur the organizing drives that will revive the union movement in Detroit and nationwide.

Questions of strategy

The Action!Motown '97 weekend also includes workshops and teach-ins on union strategy for the current period. One question that must be addressed is what the strategy will be if the Labor Board and courts do not issue favorable rulings-because history has shown over and over again that workers and the oppressed cannot rely on the government and courts to obtain justice.

Another question that should be evaluated is whether the strike could have been won much earlier if the union leadership had not abandoned the militant tactics that characterized the early period.

In 1995, on Labor Day weekend and the weekend that followed, thousands of workers from many different locals and community groups in the Detroit area came out for all-night demonstrations that shut down scab production at the Sterling Heights printing plant. Momentum and support for the newspaper strikers was building to a crescendo.

However, when the companies obtained a court injunction limiting pickets at the printing plant, the national union leadership made a decision to obey the injunction, abandon the tactics of mass mobilization and direct action, and rely instead on a consumer boycott to carry out the struggle.

One-and-a-half years later, the boycott has cost the newspapers hundreds of millions of dollars. But this has been not been enough to force Gannett and Knight-Ridder back to the bargaining table.

What if the union leadership had decided to defy the injunction? What if they had prepared and mobilized the 350,000-strong union membership in the Detroit area for a decisive battle against the companies and their ruling-class backers? What about the idea, seriously discussed by many rank-and-file strikers early in the strike, of a general strike to fight the multinational corporations' systematic union busting?

To make a real contribution, the teach-ins and workshops of Action!Motown '97--while first and foremost addressing the immediate task of continued mobilization to win back all the locked-out workers' jobs, oust the scabs and get a union contract-must also take up all the critical questions to evaluate this rich struggle so its lessons can be learned to aid in battles to come.

[The writer worked at the Detroit Free Press in the 1980s. She was a shop steward and delegate in Newspaper Guild Local 22, and helped lead the struggle against the Knight-Ridder/Gannett joint operating agreement. She was arrested in a March 1996 demonstration supporting the striking newspaper workers.]

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