BY JOHN SARGE
DETROIT - After six months of a wearing confrontation with the bosses, 2,000 workers on strike against this city's two dailies, the News and Free Press, remain determined in their struggle for union rights and dignity. A number of workers are becoming battle-tested veterans of the labor movement in the process.
Protests against the union-busting drive of the newspapers continue to occur. Hundreds of strikers and their supporters leaflet stores advertising in the struck papers.
The Saturday before Christmas a delegation of workers from the Toledo Blade came to Detroit to take part. Members of the Utility Workers Union also went door-to- door in a working-class area surrounding a Super Kmart store in suburban Detroit urging a store boycott.
Twelve strike supporters, including seven University of Michigan students, were arrested December 17 while protesting the presentation of an honorary degree to retiring Free Press publisher Neal Shine.
The 12 were among several dozen who stood as Shine was introduced. They unfurled a banner reading "U-M Honored Scabs" and began singing "Solidarity Forever." Others in attendance stood with their backs to the podium or shouted "Shame on Shine" and booed during the presentation. Protesters also leafleted many of the 2,000 people in attendance. The leaflet included a mock diploma conferring a "Degree of Guilt" on Shine "for achievements in union busting and injustice against Detroit newspaper strikers."
In the first mass picket line since December 1, more than 200 strikers and their supporters turned out at 6:30 a.m. on December 28 in front of the editorial offices of the News. When asked why the unions called this protest Lou Mleczko, president of striking Newspaper Guild Local 22, said, "To let the newspapers know that we're still around."
Management is belligerent
Talks between the bosses and the unions, called for by
Detroit mayor Dennis Archer, Michigan senator Carl Levin,
and Catholic Cardinal Adam Maida, broke off December 20.
The companies refused to budge from their earlier
position.
"Management's belligerent position put forth today is what the six striking unions have faced since talks began last winter. Gannett and Knight-Ridder have again shown their total contempt for the local community," said a statement by the Detroit Metropolitan Council of Newspaper Unions, which represents the strikers.
John Jaske, lead negotiator for the papers, told the unions that they had to agree that replacement workers would not be fired to allow strikers to return. He also demanded that strikers drop their demand for amnesty for workers accused of picket line misconduct.
Jaske said strikers had to understand that future working conditions "must reflect the current operation" at the newspapers. If the unions accept, the bosses offered to set up a $2 million fund to help strikers retrain or relocate to new jobs. The company would also establish a preferential hiring list of strikers for any future job openings.
People got a glimpse of current operations at the struck newspapers a week earlier.
"Used, abused, and hung out to dry." That is how Donna Prestage said she felt after three months as a replacement carrier for the newspapers.
The `used and abused'
She and dozens of carriers recruited from other areas
were laid off because they were too expensive to maintain.
They received a housing allowance and almost double the
pay carriers previously made. Prestage and her husband
came here from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where they were
both working toward professional licenses.
Prestage along with three other recently laid-off replacement carriers described conditions at a press conference organized by the striking unions. Carriers worked 16-hour days, seven days a week, with no breaks and no days off. They were so tired, she said, that they sometimes fell asleep while driving their routes. They were also subjected to verbal and sexual abuse by circulation managers.
William Prestage said that on some days carriers were given 1,000 papers, far more than they could deliver on time. At times, he said, the number of papers they were given deliberately exceeded the number of customers in their assigned area. "The way it would end up," he said, "we'd trash them or throw them out to just everybody."
Conditions like these may explain why John Curley, the chairman of Gannett Co., corporate parent of the Detroit News, unloaded $3.2 million in stock in late November just as fourth-quarter performance numbers were being updated.
Despite numerous management predictions that the strike was over or that the unions would collapse during the holidays, the newspapers now project greater fourth- quarter losses than they experienced in the third quarter.
Pretax losses and missed profits will exceed $200 million in 1995, all due to the strike. The company also expects to lose $100 million in 1996 if the strike continues, according to recent corporate financial statements.
Two recent actions indicating the weakness of the newspapers continue to buoy the spirits of strikers. The first are reports that discounted advertising rates would end after Christmas. These have been the norm since July 13, the start of the strike. Strikers expect an exodus of advertisers when prices go up.
The newspapers also just mailed 90,000 collection letters to customers who haven't paid their bills since the strike began. At least one Detroit area lawyer who cut off delivery in July has threatened to take action against the papers. He reportedly informed a customer service representative, "If I had done something like that, billing people in the mail for a service I didn't provide, I would be guilty of mail fraud."
The National Labor Relations Board has issued four new complaints against the two newspapers. The charges focus on the way the News implemented "merit" pay thereby sparking the strike.
Others include the company's use of threats to try to get editorial workers to cross the picket lines, and the refusal of the newspapers to supply the unions with requested information during negotiations.
John Sarge is a member of United Auto Workers Local 900 in Detroit.