Daily News strike ends; mixed result for workers

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NEW YORK-On March 12, a tentative agreement was reached at the New York Daily News between the unions of the allied Trades Printing Council and the paper's new owner, British newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell. Once ratified by the union memberships, it will bring an end to the over four-month-long strike.

The proposed contract would be for three years, with no pay raise in the first year and wage reopeners in the other two. Eight hundred of the 2300 unionized workers at the paper will lose their jobs and one of the three printing plants will be closed, but the "permanent replacement" scabs hired by the News management during the strike will be removed and the question of "management rights" on the shop floor (the immediate cause of the strike) will be dropped for now.

Upon hearing of the agreement, strikers walking the picket line celebrated with champagne in plastic cups, while their union leaders hailed it as a great victory. It will now be necessary in the strike's aftermath to assess the validity of these sentiments.

Role of union bureaucrats The result at the Daily News represented a partial victory. It was the best outcome possible, given the no-win strategy pursued by the bureaucrats heading the striking unions-—aided and abetted by the New York City Central Labor Council.

The rank and file were the ones who successfully built the strike and made it as effective as it was. They used flying pickets (which enforced the boycott on the scab News by preventing its being sold at newstands), allied themselves with other workers in struggle in the city, mobilized tens of thousands in solidarity demonstrations, and got out the striker-produced Real News to tell their side of the story.

Their unity, militancy, and sense of organization upset the plans of the Tribune Co. (the Chicago-based former owner of the News) to stage a repeat of the 1985 Chicago Tribune strike by provoking a walkout in order to bust the paper's unions and set up a non-union operation.

The fact that any new contract was won at all was solely due to the fact that the strike survived in the later months on the momentum built by the mobilization of the striking ranks and the support they won from the city's workers, who correctly saw the News strikers' fight as their own.

The union bureaucrats, on the other hand, searched for a "white knight" to buy the paper, promoted a Corporate Campaign-style boycott based on moral appeals, perpetuated illusions in capitalist politicians as "friends of labor," and reined in their members in the face of anti-strike injunctions against mass picketing at the News plants.

They also connived with the Central Labor Council to thwart attempts at sympathy strikes by the city's transit and hospital workers. Finally, they let it be known from the start that they were willing to accept for the News workers the same concessionary terms imposed on the New York Post workers in their contract signed shortly before the News strike.

This dead-end strategy continually acted to sabotage the efforts of the ranks, who were not able to develop an alternative leadership of their own. As a result, the strike eventually shifted from a mass class-struggle fight to a process of closed-room dealing.

The mobilizations in the street ceased, the Real News was no longer published, and the circulation of the scab News increased from 25 percent to 50 percent of pre-strike figures.

The bureaucrats are now touting the virtues of Robert Maxwell as the "savior" who will act in partnership with the unions to make the News a successful paper again.

Maxwell, however, is no better than any other boss. Known as "Mad Max" and "Cap'n Bob the Pirate," he is a corporate raider in the mold of Rupert Murdoch, Carl Icahn, and Donald Trump, with a reputation in Britain as a notorious union-buster.

Given the present state of the News-with reduced circulation, lack of advertising, and a massive debt—Maxwell will undoubtedly press for further concessions in the near future.

Thus, the present News contract represents at best a temporary respite (under rather onerous terms) in a fight which will no doubt continue at a later date. What could have been a significant victory is instead a fairly hollow one.

Lessons to be learned The Daily News strike must also be seen, however, in the context of the current state of the labor movement. Strikes have been primarily defensive in nature, attempting to preserve previous gains or even the existence of unions, rather than to make new gains.

In the past decade, the strikes which have attained national significance (PATCO, solidarity of the whole of the United Mine Workers, the Pittston miners showed that it was still possible to go on strike and return to work afterwards under union conditions in a company still in business.

The Pittston strikers did give concessions in their contract, in terms of hours and jobs, which were important givebacks. The issue of court-levied fines was never resolved.

However, and more important in this situation, they preserved their union and with it the means to fight in the future. They showed by their example that strikes are not obsolete today, to be replaced by consumer boycotts and legal maneuvering, which was a conclusion being drawn by many workers after a decade of defeats.

In this context, the strike at the Daily News can be seen as the closest thing to a Pittston that has occurred in recent years. Although the concessions made in this strike were severe, and the future security of the remaining workers' jobs uncertain, the fact remains that the News strikers defeated the Tribune Co. in their stated aim of operating the paper non-union while avoiding a situation like that of the Eastern strike where the destruction of the company, destroyed thousands of union jobs as well.

Further, by their example, the striking ranks have demonstrated important tactical methods that can be utilized in the future.

Finally, there are a few long-term lessons that class-struggle fighters can learn from this strike. The main ones are the need for a strategy of mass picketing to shutdown production and the extension of strikes in order to maximize labor power.

The thousands of workers who attended rallies at the paper's headquarters could have instead been mobilized at the printing plants to prevent scabs, printing paper, and ink from coming in. Other unions could have been called out to strike in sympathy (for which there was significant sentiment).

The monthly Real News could have been developed into a daily in order to provide a tool for organizing the strike and a working-class source of information to counter the capitalist-owned media. Above all, what was needed was the will to rely solely on the organized power of the working class to conquer all obstacles.

The labor movement in this country still has a long way to go before it can successfully halt the employers' offensive and begin to counterattack.

There will be more defeats and semidefeats before the business unionist bureaucrats are ousted and the unions are transformed into fighting organizations. The labor movement will then go on to organize the unemployed to prevent scabbing, fight the threat of plant closures with the demand for nationalization under workers' control, and form a labor party based on the unions.

To learn the correct lessons of present-day strikes and to successfully apply them will help to hasten that day.