Administrative Law Judge Robert Schwarzbart upheld a complaint against The Bay City Times, The Flint Journal, The Grand Rapids Press and The Saginaw News.
The complaint was filed by the Graphic Communications Union Local 13N and the AFL-CIO, and supported by the National Labor Relations Board.
Schwarzbart's order was dated Jan. 22.
"It's a good step in the right direction," NLRB regional director William Schaub said yesterday. "Essentially, these people had applied for jobs, and the employers refuse to take them. The judge agreed with me that the reason these people were not hired was because they were striking."
The unions alleged that the newspapers ordered them not to let striking pressmen fill in as substitutes shortly after the strike began July 13, 1995, against the Detroit Free Press, The Detroit News and their business and production agency, Detroit Newspapers Inc.
Before the strike, Schwarzbart said, the unions had sent in anyone they deemed qualified as a substitute worker.
He said union officials testified that at the Press, they were told that the eight-newspaper Booth group would not hire any new substitutes. In three cases, he said, newspaper officials said they were worried that new substitutes would hurt the paper's printing quality.
Schwarzbart ruled the papers had discriminated against the striking workers and had violated their contract with the union. He ordered the Times to compensate five workers for income lost as a result of being taken off a list of possible substitutes, and ordered all four papers to let strikers work as substitutes.
Publishers at the Times, News and Press said they had just received the ruling and did not know whether there would be an appeal. The attorney who handled the complaint for Booth Newspapers, Bruce Berry, did not immediately return calls yesterday.