From LOVE AND RAGE NEWSPAPER

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Too Little Too Late for Detroit Newspaper Strikers

ACTION MOTOWN '97 in support of Detroit's 2,000 locked out newspaper strikers was big on numbers and short on action. Pro-union sources put participation in the June 21 march and rally in the 60 to 100,000 range. The newspapers pushed a 10 to 20,000 figure. Actual turnout fell somewhere in between.

Militant action was nonexistent. Reliance on the state was the overarching theme of the weekend's events. Starting Friday June 20, people were treated to claims of near victory. A Thursday ruling by a judge attached to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) was the backdrop.

In a 113-page decision, Judge Thomas R. Wilks found Detroit's two daily newspapers guilty on 10 of 12 charges of unfair labor practices. If the ruling holds the papers will have to reinstate the striking workers and "displace, if necessary, replacement workers..."

The return to work could conceivably take up to two years, since the newspapers will appeal. The union strategy is to build political pressure towards securing a 10(j) federal injunction, which would effect an immediate return despite the appeals process.

For this to happen the NLRB's five-member governing board must decide to seek and successfully obtain such an injunction in the courts. None of this, if gained, returns to work nearly 200 strikers terminated for picket line offenses.

Not surprisingly, the AFL-CIO has diverted the movement strategy into putting political pressure on elected officials. Last year they turned down appeals for a mass action in Detroit. In doing this they cited the need to focus on getting Clinton re-elected. On June 9, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney and other union heads held a summit with President Clinton. Undoubtedly the situation in Detroit was one point on the agenda.

The union bureaucracy used its relationship with the Democratic Party to pull off the NLRB announcement going into June 21. Now they are relying on these same ties to get them a 10(j) injunction. Tens of thousands of people were mobilized on June 21 to give the active ranks a feeling of involvement and accomplishment. Given the dissipation of the strike and the announced "progress" and hope, the mobilization was carried off without any independent direct action breaking loose as it had during Labor Day 1995. Just in case any folks were tempted, marchers were hurried on after a brief pause in front of the newspaper offices. A burly assemblage of union muscle was also assigned to guard the entrances, just in case.

A little color and spirit was added to a small piece of the march by a loose contingent of partisans of Rojo y Negro / Red and Black. The United Farm Workers (UFW), the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), Industrial Workers of the World and anarchists had coordinated some weekend activities but had little impact. This effort was good and should be repeated at future labor actions.

The union misleaderships, the Democrats and the state still exert considerable authority over the most active layers of unionists. The reformist bureaucrats may succeed in pulling most of their (and others) chestnuts from the fire in Detroit but the union movement stands no stronger. One task of revolutionaries is to patiently hammer away at these chains that bind.

For a Revolutionary Labor Movement

This march is a year and a half or more overdue. Now it happens with the strike called off and the majority of unionists locked-out. Those accepted back are working with no rights amidst scabs and turncoats.

A misguided commitment to legality and refusal to unleash working class power has brought us to this sorry state. A failure to develop and maintain a decidedly multi-racial character to the support movement in this majority Black city has helped isolate the strike. The strike needed to be connected to fights around the crisis in education, redevelopment, and the general 30 years of racist corporate and suburban neglect of Detroit.

Only direct action on a mass scale could turn this thing around and win justice for our sisters and brothers. A tri-county general strike in their support is needed. All labor organizations in the area should strike until all union members are returned to work.

The Detroit News Agency has waged a class war. From the jump, strikers and their supporters courageously answered the DNA's violence. But the union leaders chose to use their authority to pull people back from militant struggle. They retreated in the face of court injunctions, threats of racketeering charges and fear of losing the sympathies of "influential" figures.

The lesson of the Detroit newspaper strike is that of the Staley, CAT, Hormel and other struggles: the labor movement must become self-consciously revolutionary if it is to advance.

By this we mean:

• A refusal to submit to the capitalists' labor laws. Virtually all the tactics that build the unions--shop floor action, secondary boycotts, plant occupations, and general strikes--are illegal. The government is not neutral, but an ally of the bosses. We must not only break with the Democrats but refuse to collaborate with the capitalists' whole sham "democracy." Participation in their political institutions breeds corruption, weakness and defeat. To defend our interests we need independent combat, power and organization.

• Class struggle not business unionism. We must throw off the strait jacket of company-by-company collective bargaining. We cannot win against the capitalist class, the courts, and cops by fighting on an employer-by-employer basis. We need neighborhood, district, and city-wide assemblies/councils that unite people from different workplaces, both employed and unemployed, young and older. Such class organizations need to fight in a revolutionary manner for the billions in funds (and control over their use) needed to rebuild our cities and communities. We must demand reparations from the corporations for decades of exploitation. We need daycare, health care, quality education, transportation and jobs under real democratic control of the people, not stadiums, casinos, and Hard Rock Cafes controlled by the rich.