50,000 march to back locked-out newspaper workers
By Barry Sheppard
With the support of the national union federation, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), union activists from around the country mobilised on June 21 to support their embattled brothers and sisters who have been fighting for almost two years against the union-busting tactics of the media moguls who control the city's two major papers.
The Free Press is owned by the Knight-Rider conglomerate and the News by the giant Gannet company. Both papers' business and production are jointly carried out by Detroit Newspapers, Inc.
Top AFL-CIO officials were on hand to deliver militant speeches. But it appeared that the majority of marchers were not organised by the leaderships of the international unions that compose the AFL-CIO, but by local unions responding to appeals from the locals of the striking/locked out workers in Detroit and a rank-and-file movement known as ACOSS (Action Coalition of Strikers and Supporters).
Six local unions, representing about 2500 workers, were forced out on strike on July 13, 1995, by the companies. After a prolonged strike which included mass picketing by the workers and violence by the cops, and court injunctions against the strikers, the local union leaders made an unconditional offer to return to their jobs. The idea was to preserve the unions intact and reorganise to fight another day.
The companies were able to use the courts and police under the reactionary labour laws in this country, to keep production going by using scabs whom the strikers weren't able to keep out of the plants, although they tried.
At a recent Labor Notes conference, a black woman striker explained that one of the problems was that the union did not do enough to reach out to the black community in this majority black city.
The union offer was rejected by the companies. They vow to maintain the scab work force they built up during the strike, making only a few jobs available to the strikers. Only 200 strikers have been called back to work, turning the strike into a lockout.
The day before the march, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) got an administrative law judge to rule that the 19-month strike was caused by unfair labour practices by the companies, and that the newspapers must take back the striking workers even if this means displacing the scabs.
While the NLRB action obviously was taken with the next day's march in mind, it does not yet mean the ruling will be enforced. Newspaper official said they will not implement the judge's order because they will appeal it to the NLRB. Appeals could take years to decide.
The legal battle now shifts to a request by the unions for the NLRB to seek an injunction to immediately restore jobs for all non-fired union workers who want them. Even if this injunction is won, the companies would appeal at once.
Such an injunction, under law, wouldn't cover workers fired during the strike because of their strike activities.
Meanwhile, ACOSS has appealed for local actions against Knight-Rider and Gannet offices and publications across the country for July 11 and 12.
ACOSS states, "Neither the NLRB nor the courts make decisions in a vacuum. They keep a close eye on what is going on in the streets. If they see a huge outpouring of workers in Detroit in June followed by simultaneous and coordinated local actions around the nation in July, this can help pressure the board and the courts to make concessions to the unions ... The struggle must continue until all locked-out and fired newspaper workers are reinstated under a union contract."
This union battle demonstrates once again that workers confront labour laws that allow the companies to use judges to cripple their strikes with injunctions and the use of police power.
It seems that workers must either break these unjust laws, which requires mobilising union solidarity and mass support, or change them through building a mass workers party.
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