Last week, the National Labor Relations Board finally settled a three-year strike with a unanimous ruling that the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News violated labor laws and failed to bargain in good faith with their employees. The Board found that the newspapers acted in bad faith because they insisted that all raises be based on merit without providing details as to how the merit system would work and how much money would be put into the raise pool. This three-year-old strike has been a continuing conflict between management and labor - the papers hired replacement employees in the meantime. The length of the strike has exacerbated the problem of a settlement between the interested parties. The Board ordered the two newspapers to rehire hundreds of reporters, drivers, pressmen and other workers and to give them millions of dollars in back wages.
The Board ordered the newspapers to reinstate the workers within 21 days, although an appeal may delay this action. The ruling has wreaked havoc among the strikers as well as the hundreds of employees hired as permanent replacement workers.
It is time for the newspapers to restore their fragile relationship with their labor force. Disputing claims of how many workers actually struck and should be rehired, how much back pay is owed by the companies, and appealing the board's order to reinstate the workers will not hasten this already lengthy process.
Both the unions and the newspapers were hurt during the strike. During the 2,500-person walkout, the newspapers kept operating with permanent replacement workers, and they lost more than $100 million and saw their combined circulation plunge 300,000 at the beginning of the strike. At a rally in Detroit last week, the workers said the ruling was great news for them. For those workers who are awaiting reinstatement, the Board's verdict and intervention was late, but appreciated. Many other workers who left in the summer of 1995 moved on in their lives when they saw their jobs being replaced and the division between the two sides persisting without government intervention. These workers are the real casualties and losers of this dispute.
While the Board's decision favors the workers, their three-year delay in settling this matter has adversely affected many lives. Workers who found jobs elsewhere are eligible to return and are entitled to back pay amounting to their lost salary minus whatever pay they received in other jobs in the interim. Giving a person their job back is easy; giving a person their former life back is not. The decision of the ruling did not make these people casualties, but the length of time it took to reach the decision did. This book is not finished, though - the last chapter has yet to be written. The newspapers state they will not lay off any replacement workers to make way for the strikers. Mark Silverman, publisher of The Detroit News, said the newspapers are planning to appeal the decision. It looks like this lengthy standoff will continue to go on hurting many more people. It is clear that a more rapid intervention and settlement process by the Board is essential if future management-labor disputes are to be decided in a time frame that can actually benefit people's lives - not force them to break with the past and find a new future.
09-11-98
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