Union Members Deliver a Message to Gannett, Knight Ridder

Hundreds of union members mobilized April 28 to stage protests on behalf of thousands of newspaper workers whose lives have been disrupted by two of the nation's largest media conglomerates, Knight Ridder and Gannett.

CWA President Morton Bahr and Newspaper Guild President Linda Foley led a rally of several hundred CWA members outside the Knight Ridder shareholder meeting in Miami, Fla., to voice their anger at the way the chain has treated employees in Detroit, Mich., and Monterey, Calif. Other participants at the Knight Ridder meeting included Jocelyn Heard of the Detroit Free Press and Donna Mosley, a fired worker from Monterey.

Newspaper Guild Secretary-Treasurer Bernie Lunzer headed up a rally staged by hundreds more at the Rosslyn, Va., headquarters of Gannett - publisher of USA Today and the Detroit News - to support members involved in the long running strike/lockout in Detroit.

Members of six unions - including The Newspaper Guild-CWA and CWA's printing, publishing and media workers sector - first struck the Detroit News and Free Press on July 13, 1995, and have been victims of a lockout since February 1997. The Detroit newspapers are owned by Gannett and Knight Ridder.

In Monterey, Knight Ridder swapped one of its properties for the Monterey Herald and promptly fired the entire staff - most of whom were later rehired after the workers and the community expressed outrage.

Bahr and Foley presented Knight Ridder shareholders with a resolution that would have caused the company to adopt a set of principles making management accountable to the communities in which the company publishes.

Foley later said that although the CWA-sponsored resolution only captured 2 percent of the shareholder vote - 1,726,546 out of more than 75 million shares represented at the meeting - she considered it a victory that the union was able to get the matter on the proxy statement that went to all shareholders.

She said the union plans to raise the same principles in various other communities where the chain has media outlets.

In Rosslyn, outside the USA Today property, Lunzer told demonstrators that, "It seems to me if we can get peace in northern Ireland, we ought to be able to get peace in Detroit. Peace in Detroit, of course, means a fair contract."

The Teamsters union - one of the main players in the strike/lockout in Detroit - circled the spiraling towers of the Gannett chain in Rosslyn, and Teamster members came from as far away as Baltimore and Pittsburgh to participate.

Also in support of the Detroit strikers, Moe Biller, president of the American Postal Workers Union, has reminded all APWU local, state and national officers that the union is boycotting the Federal Times, a Gannett publication, until the lockout is resolved.

Biller reiterated the union's position to all officers and staff in APWU in early April, adding that the directive prohibits officers from responding to requests for interviews or information until labor peace has been restored in Detroit.