Detroit strike a test for unions
By Barry Sheppard
July 13 was the first anniversary of the Detroit newspaper strike, which is the most important labour struggle taking place in the United States today.
This war of attrition pits 2000 workers from six unions against one of the world's largest media conglomerates, Knight-Ridder and Gannett, owners of the two main dailies in the city of Detroit (the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News) as well as of countless other newspapers across the country.
As corporations have increasingly taken up union-busting tactics, the number of strikes has plummeted in the US to the lowest level in 40 years. There have been few wins for the unions and many defeats — from the air traffic controllers' (PATCO) strike in 1981, to the Hormel meat packers in 1985-6, to the Caterpillar and A.E. Staley workers in the mid-1990s.
The Detroit strike comes after attacks on newspaper workers in New York, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. There is a consistent drive by the industry to either break their unions or make them totally subservient to the commands of profit.
Detroit is historically one of the strongholds of unionism in the US — home of the mighty United Auto Workers union. The message to the unions is clear: if Knight-Ridder/Gannett succeeds in smashing the newspaper unions in Detroit, other unions will be next.
Major changes are gripping the union movement in this country. John Sweeney has replaced Lane Kirkland as head of the AFL-CIO in the first contested election since the founding of the labour federation. Sweeney has promised to rejuvenate the moribund organisation and to devote significantly more resources to organising the unorganised.
This year the AFL-CIO has launched what it calls Union Summer, recruiting some 1000 students and young people to participate in union organising, strike support and pro-union political campaigns across the country.
In Detroit the whole union movement, especially the UAW, has come behind the newspaper strikers. An organisation of community supporters called Readers United has organised numerous and imaginative rallies, sit-ins and civil disobedience. Some 300 prominent citizens have allowed themselves to be arrested in actions supporting the strikers.
At the end of the summer last year, thousands of strikers picketed the newspapers' main printing plant, and pitched battles with police and security guards occurred. The newspapers promptly went to a compliant court and got an injunction against mass pickets at that strategic plant.
The Detroit AFL-CIO and the six striking unions have called on the national AFL-CIO to call a massive march on Detroit in support of the strike. Many strikers see the Million Man March by African-Americans in Washington, DC, last October as a model for the kind of mobilisation that labour needs to mount in order to win this strike and put labour on the map again as a movement ready to use its muscle.
One good sign is the determination of these strikers. The newspaper unions publish a weekly paper, the Detroit Sunday Journal, with a circulation of 200,000. In its special edition marking the anniversary of the strike, the editors write: "When the strike began ... few if any ... realized that something so cataclysmic could become one of life's most spiritually liberating experiences.
"But that is what happened. We were subjected to pressures designed to crush our spirit, to send us slinking back to work with neither a contract nor a sense of social conscience.
"The tactics didn't work. Instead of turning into dusty shadows of our former selves, we have become stronger. We know we are part of a much larger struggle to secure and maintain decent jobs for all working folks."