Detroit news strike: 11 weeks, holding firm

by Fred Gaboury

This article was reprinted from the September 30, 1995 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

Shavonne Terpina said the past week of the Detroit newspaper strike was quite a week: "Steve Duchane, the city manager of Sterling Heights resigned," she told the World.

"At its last meeting the Sterling Heights City Council voted not to accept any more money from the newspaper publishers to pay police who have been involved in brutal attacks on strikers and their supporters. And, for the fourth consecutive Saturday night, we succeeded in disrupting delivery of the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press that were produced behind union picket lines."

Mike Hein, a member of Teamster Local 372, was jubilant when asked if the fact that Duchane had ordered Sterling Heights police to brutally attack pickets at the printing plant where scab-produced newspapers are printed had anything to do with his resignation. "I would say so," he said. "Yes, indeed, I would say so."

Some 2,500 newspaper workers belonging to six different local unions have been on strike against Detroit's two metropolitan papers since July 13. The unions were forced to strike when the Detroit Newspaper Agency (DNA), which represents the papers in negotiations, refused to extend the contract while negotiations continued. Sterling Heights police have been particularly brutal in attacking pickets in order to allow trucks to leave the plant.

Terpina is the AFL-CIO representative who coordinates the activities of the Labor/Community/Religious Coalition in Support of the Striking Newspaper Unions. "Our job is to find ways of supporting the strike," she said, adding that the coalition had been instrumental in the campaign that has so far convinced more than a quarter of a million Detroiters to cancel their subscriptions to the two papers.

The coalition has also worked to convince merchants to cancel their advertising. "We've convinced about 200 to do so," Terpina said, "and we are leafleting stores that continue to advertise, urging customers to take their business somewhere else." The coalition also organized a "visit" of several hundred people to the home of Frank Vega, the CEO of the DNA, on Sunday, Sept. 17.

"Yes, they can dispatch hundreds of cops to escort scabs through our picket lines but they will never break our spirit nor will they break the strike," Wendell Addington, a member of Steelworkers Local 1299 told the World on Tuesday.

Addington was one of the several hundred trade unionists who blocked delivery of the scab-produced joint edition of Detroit's metropolitan newspapers in the wee small hours of Sunday morning. Eventually Detroit police cleared a path but Addington said the pickets made their point.

"We not only kept a big semi that was loaded with papers from entering the station, we kept several smaller delivery vans from leaving," Addington said, explaining that a distribution warehouse was where larger truckloads of papers were broken down into smaller loads for delivery to retail outlets and street boxes.

Addington said his local had targeted a distribution warehouse in Lincoln Park. "Our members drop by in the afternoon either on their way to work or on the way home. After our last union meeting about 40 of us marched to the warehouse." Addington said the local had organized a one-day gate collection that raised over $3,500 for the strikers.

Detroit city council president: 'I'll be on the picket line!'

"Of course, I'll be there," Maryann Mahaffey, president of the Detroit City Council, said enthusiastically when asked if she was going to walk the picket line with striking Detroit newspaper workers.

"I fully support the unions and their demands. None of us should buy or even read either the News or Free Press."

Mahaffey said the strike was an "obvious effort to break the unions involved. Everything that's been said and done by the publishers leads one to that conclusion."

Mahaffey said she supports the initiative of the mayors of Detroit and Sterling Heights in calling for "round-the- clock" bargaining to end the strike. She was contemptuous of the position of the publishers.

"On the one hand, they tell us that despite the strike, they have been able to keep over 90 percent of their subscribers. Then they refuse the mayors' request to bargain because circulation is down 30 percent and they want the unions to relieve the pressure. But," she asked, her voice turning angry, "isn't that what employers always do?"