BY JOHN SARGE
DETROIT - "If you're not together, if you're not part of the union, you're nothing. We are together! We will win," declared Paul Kulka.
Kulka, a striking Detroit newspaper circulation worker, and a member of Teamsters Local 372, was reporting on his travels as a member of the Detroit newspaper strike speakers bureau. He was addressing a rally and concert that drew over 500 strikers and their supporters at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 58 hall here December 3.
Along with members of all six striking unions and their local supporters, unionists traveled from Chicago and Decatur, Illinois, the Twin Cities, and Washington D.C. to attend the event.
Kate DeSmet, a striking member of the Newspaper Guild said that across the country "support for this strike is awesome." Kulka and DeSmet have traveled to New England, New York, northern California, and Washington state in the last two months. They have been explaining the stakes for working people in the battle by more than 2,000 newspaper workers against the Detroit News and Free Press.
DeSmet told the gathered unionists that she went to Everett, Washington, on November 12 to take part in a rally in support of members of the International Association of Machinists on strike against Boeing. There someone approached her and said he had just read in the local paper that the Detroit newspaper strike was over.
"I told him that the striking unions' rank and file had news for anyone who wanted to say that the strike is over," DeSmet said. "The strike ain't over till we say it's over." Management, she added, "Wished it was over."
Linda Chávez-Thompson, Executive Vice President of the AFL-CIO also spoke. "Today the AFL-CIO is launching a nationwide adopt a family campaign," for Detroit strikers, she said. A regional adopt a striker campaign has asked union locals to make regular contributions to individual strikers' families.
Other speakers included local labor leaders and Dan Lane, a member of United Paperworkers International Union Local 7837, who has been locked out by A.E. Staley in Decatur, Illinois for over 30 months.
Effect of the strike
Members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 26, which
represents Detroit bus drivers, presented $1,060 to the
strikers they had raised to support the struggle.
The effects of the strike on the functioning of the News and Free Press are driven home every week. The two newspapers suffered a 42 percent decline in advertising during the crucial Thanksgiving weekend. There was 772 pages of advertising in 1994 and only 448 pages this year.
"The holiday season is absolutely critical to the newspaper business," said Al Young, president of Teamsters Local 2040, which represents mailroom workers. "If the News and Free Press can't convince advertisers to stay in the paper during this time of the year," he continued, "they have a very serious problem on their hands, much more serious than they're willing to admit."
Strikers and their supporters kept the pressure on advertisers still in the paper by mobilizing over 1,000 people to go out and leaflet at retail locations the Friday after Thanksgiving.
Knight-Ridder Inc., owner of the Free Press continues to suffer severe financial losses due to the strike, according to a monthly financial report released by the company.
"October numbers continue to reflect losses associated with the strike against Detroit Newspapers," Knight-Ridder reported. Company chairman Tony Ridder had earlier estimated the strike will cost his company $56 million in 1995, after a profitable 1994.
Firefighters ordered against pickets?
An article in the December 2 Alliance, a strike bulletin
produced by the Metropolitan Council of Newspaper Unions
reported that firefighters in six suburban communities may
be ordered against the mass pickets on Saturday nights.
Firefighters, it said, in "Dearborn, Sterling Heights,
Warren, Lincoln Park, Southgate and Taylor have been told
that officials are considering using fire fighters armed
with hoses against striking union members."
Lawrence McColl, Michigan State Fire Fighters Union president, has sent a letter to union fire fighters in those cities calling on them to resist any effort to hose strikers, exposing pickets to injury and hypothermia with Michigan's sub-freezing winter temperatures.
The Detroit Newspaper Agency, the joint business operation of the struck papers, tried to get a court injunction limiting picketing at the Harper Woods newspaper distribution center after large picket lines surrounded the site in the early morning hours of November 25. To management's chagrin, a local judge refused to issue the injunction.
John Sarge is a member of United Auto Workers Local 900 in Detroit.