Labor Board to Detroit Newspapers: "Rehire Strikers with Full Back Pay"

The holiday season kicked off early this year for union-represented newspaper workers in Detroit.

On Sept. 1, the full National Labor Relations Board unanimously ordered the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press to rehire hundreds of workers who went on strike more than three years ago — and to pay them hundreds of millions of dollars in back pay.

Managements at the papers were also told they would have to clear the way for the returning workers, even if it meant firing the "permanent" replacements hired to break the strike.

The NLRB’s key finding was that the walkout was an "unfair labor practice strike" — which legally precludes permanent replacement — that was provoked by management’s refusal to provide information sought by the unions as part of the collective bargaining process.

The full board’s ruling came on an appeal by the publishers of a decision by an NLRB administrative law judge who also had deemed the walkout an unfair labor practice strike.

Union leaders say the ruling could cost management at the daily newspapers as much as $80 million a year in back pay awards.

CWA Vice President Linda Foley, who heads up The Newspaper Guild-CWA, labeled the publishers of the newspapers — the Gannett and Knight Ridder chains — "serial law breakers." She added: "Once again, the publishers have been found to have deliberately engineered this tragic strike and to have sustained a brutal campaign against these working families for exercising their basic collective bargaining rights."

CWA Vice President Bill Boarman, who heads up CWA’s Printing, Publishing and Media Workers Sector, called the NLRB verdict "great news that is long overdue," adding: "I hope the company will honor the decision of the NLRB so we can put this deplorable chapter in American labor relations behind us, and get back to work."

The Detroit News and Free Press have appealed the labor board ruling to a federal appeals court.

Other unions at the News and Free Press include the Teamsters and the Graphic Communications International.

The ruling came in the midst of the first face-to-face talks between the six unions and management in more than 20 months. Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services representative Brian Flores, a one-time administrative officer with the Washington-Baltimore unit of TNG-CWA, was instrumental in getting the parties back together.

Approximately 2,500 workers walked off their jobs in July 1995 when the strike started and estimates on the number who are still out or have not been called back differ widely. The unions say that as many as 1,200 members are affected, while management puts the number at 642.

The three Democrats and two Republicans on the NLRB ruled that management had failed to bargain in good faith because after insisting that all wage raises be based on merit, the Detroit News repeatedly declined to tell the unions how a merit system would work and how much money would be put into the merit raise pool.

The board also said management violated federal labor law by threatening to replace the strikers, by failing to deal with the unions over the replacement issue, by illegally declaring an impasse and imposing the merit pay plan, by removing the TNG-CWA bulletin boards from editorial offices, and by refusing to reinstate the workers after their unconditional offer to return to work in February 1997.

The newspapers — backed by multimillion-dollar media conglomerates — have already sustained heavy losses as a result of their prolonged assault on workers: boycotts have reduced circulation from 900,000 to 600,000, and advertisers pulled out of the papers rather than offend the unions. Some say the monetary losses are now more than $100 million.