N.Y. Daily News strike symbolizes growing fightback mood of workers

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been mobilized to break the strike. When they are not busy escorting scab trucks, they are busu arrestina : strikers.' busy arresting strikers.

By CHRIS NEW YORK—In a strike that is being closely watched by working people in New York and around the country, 2600 workers struck the Daily News on Oct. 26.

The strike at one of New York's two largest dailies began when an injured worker was ordered to stand while doing his work even though he had been well able to perform his job while seated. The strike was the culmination of a 10-month battle characterized by harassment of workers by supervisors on the shop floor. This was coupled with demands for massive takeaways by management at the bargaining table.

Daily News employees have been working without a contract since March 31. They charge the company, owned by the infamous James Hoge of the Chicago Tribune, with trying to break the union.

The unions say they have been trying to guard against the newspaper boss's attempts to provoke a strike. But within hours of being locked out at the News' Brooklyn plant, a bus drove up with 60 scab "permanent replacements," forcing the workers out on "This is a declaration of war by management," said George McDonald, president of the Allied Printing Trades Council, as strikers mobilized to stop production and distribution of the struck newspaper.

On the night of Oct. 26, nine out of the 10 unions representing workers at The Daily News were honoring the picket line. This included the all-important drivers and newspaper reporters. Only the typographers refused to go out.

Popular news columnist Mike McAlary said, "New York City is a union town. People consider it a fundamental right to have them here, and I'm glad there's one at The Daily News.. I will not cross the picket line." Richard Brandt, one of the pressmen picketing the Brooklyn plant, said: "We're in this to the end. This stuff is going on now at all the newspapers."

Labor movement scapegoated

A key management strategy, widely picked up and trumpeted by all the big-business newspapers, has been to claim that organized labor is to blame for The News' present financial difficulties. The News claims to be losing money in recent years despite the fact that it is the second-best selling daily paper in America.

The owners refuse, of course, to open their financial books to back up their claim. Nor will they open the books of the associated Chicago Tribune, to which, workers suspect, profits from The Daily News have been siphoned in recent years.

But even if the claim that The News is losing money is true, this is a result of the sharpening competition between competing newspaper giants—not because wages are too high. The most important factor determining the outcome of the struggle among the media giants is which has the most capital to put into more productive technology that will enable it to sell a better product at the lowest cost.

The newspaper bosses' demand for more givebacks from the workers to reduce costs cannot save any competing enterprise from going belly-up in the never-ending war between capitalists for market shares.

Such attempts to scapegoat labor for what is essentially a capitalist crisis, is a deepening trend in recent labor battles. This charge is totally false. It was the bosses, and not the news workers, who didn't or couldn't find the necessary capital for investment in advanced technology such as a modern color press. Such capital investment is considered essential if the Daily News is to compete successfully with the other media giants in the 21st century.

Givebacks by the unions at the Daily News in 1987, as well as at the Post in 20 SOCIALIST ACTION Daily News workers on the picketline Oct.

'The New York City August 1990, have only emboldened the bosses to pursue similar concessions and advance their union-busting campaign throughout the newspaper industry.

Despite pleas of poverty, Hoge and Co. have invested $40 million to recruit scabs and management personnel to police them. They have even bought a newspaper plant in New Jersey-dubbed "Fort Hoge," by the workers—specifically for the purpose of producing scab editions of the News. Using a non-union plant as backup after provoking a strike was inspired by fellow newspaper boss Rupert Murdock. He used this tactic to smash the powerful London printers' unions a few years ago.

True face of the cops The New York City police have been mobilized to break the strike. When they are not escorting scab delivery trucks, they are busy arresting striking workers. So far 40 strikers have been arrested for the "crime" of defending their jobs, and a large number of those arrested have been charged with felonies.

Workers are paying taxes to finance this scab herding by the police. New York Mayor David Dinkins, the "friend of labor" Democrat, has sicced the union-busting cops on the striking workers. While there is always enough money for scab-herding, the capitalist mayor is preparing to fire 35,000 city workers, even though the city is already short of funds for schools, subways, hospitals and other essential services.

Daily News workers, many of whom have worked there all their lives, are digging in for a fight to the finish. A visit by Socialist Action to the Brooklyn plant found their mood to be resolute and determined. Few exNOVEMBER 1990 'We're in this to have pect the strike to be short or easy.

"Flying pickets," modeled on the famous roving picket-squads of the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strikes, are fanning out throughout the city. They are persuading news-stand workers not to handle the scab paper. Teamster union drivers have backed them up by not making deliveries of any kind to news-dealers selling the Daily News.

The New York dailies are giving their fellow capitalist a helping hand by giving a biased, anti-labor view of the strike. Newspaper Guild members are considering starting a labor paper with mass circulation, to tell the true story. This would be a powerful weapon for labor during this strike and afterward. Meanwhile they have announced a boycott of all businesses which continue to advertise in The Daily News.

On Sunday, Oct. 29, it was hard to find the struck newspaper on the stands, although management claimed they had printed 1.2 million copies. "The momentum is on our side," declared Newspaper Guild President Barry Lipton to his membership. He is dead right. The striking newspaper workers have met the union-busters head-on with militant strike tactics recalling the best days of American labor's proud history.

An inspiring example Already it has inspired the most conscious New York City union activists to come out in solidarity to a picket-line rally. On Nov. 1, well over 10,000 municipal and other workers came out in support of striking workers in a demonstration outside The Daily News. And this is just a beginning toward mobilizing all working people to help in a battle whose outcome will affect all labor.

Striking newspaper workers have taken a big step in the right direction-toward relying entirely on their own independent power as a part of the New York working class. The response they have received only shows what's possible if they stay on this course.

But many pitfalls will be placed in the newspaper unions' path in the days ahead. The strikers will be told they can't win; that the bosses can't afford present costs; that if they don't accept takebacks, the owners will close the plant and they will be without jobs.

While, in general, such plant closings have occurred throughout the land, and more will occur as the economy continues to fall into a tailspin, it is unlikely that this newspaper with over a million readers will go down. But to accept further cuts in wages, conditions or staffing will only whet the appetite for more demands from all newspaper publishers, as well as owners of The Daily News, for more worker sacrifices.

But in the end, the more powerful media giants will swallow the weaker and there will be fewer jobs for news workers-at lower pay and worsened conditions.

But if this strike is victorious, the relation of forces in the industry and beyond will begin to change. When the labor juggernaut again begins to roll, real solutions will be on the order of the day. When that day comes, a shorter workweek with no reduction in pay for all workers will be the way to fight plant closings and will provide the next step in the struggle for the final emancipation of labor from capitalist anarchy, unemployment, inflation and war.

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