As part of a new strategy, the leadership of the striking unions made unconditional offers to return to work in mid-February this year. Shortly thereafter, the newspaper companies announced they had accepted the offers and "healing" could now begin.

But it was more than six weeks before the first returning worker was back on the job and now, after over three months, only a handful have been permitted to return. The company has put most of the remaining workers on a "wait list" because they refuse to let go more than 1,400 so-called "permanent replacement" (scabs) workers. And, even worse, some 300 striking workers have been fired without any due process.

But the newspaper workers are not giving up. Now in a lockout situation instead of a strike, they vow to continue to fight until every former worker has been given the opportunity to return to work. They say, "If not us, who? If not now, when? If not Detroit, where?"

Also as part of the new strategy, a mass national mobilization in Detroit on Saturday, June 21, 1997 was endorsed by the AFL-CIO Executive Council at its winter meeting in February. A successful mobilization should force the news media, which has been telling the public the struggle is over, to report the truth.

The BMWE has supported the striking newspaper workers through picketing, advertising in the Sunday Journal (the strikers’ paper), the Adopt-A-Family Program and donations. And BMWE President Mac Fleming says that commitment has not and will not end. He asks that every BMWE member who can join him in Detroit on June 21 for a day of action, fun and solidarity and to help make the BMWE presence at "Action! Motown ‘97" an impressive one.

For more information, contact 888-97MOTOWN (888-976-6869) or www.action97.w1.com or Rick Inclima or Paul Swanson at Grand Lodge.

The Scab

The euphemism these days for a worker whom management brings in to displace a striker is "permanent replacement." But, as the Southern California Teamster reminds us, noted author Jack London--a Californian--had a better description of such "scabs":

"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad and the vampire, he had some awful stuff left with which he made a scab.

A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a waterlogged brain, and a combination backbone made of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles. Judas Iscariot was a gentleman compared to a scab. For betraying his Master, he had the character to hang himself--the scab hasn’t. There is nothing lower than a scab."

From The Train Dispatcher, September 1995.