For generations, Detroit has been the biggest of the big union towns, a proud old industrial center where wearing union hats and singing "Solidarity Forever" never went out of fashion.
The irony that the strength of modern unionism should be tested here, in an increasingly nasty strike against the city's two daily newspapers, The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, is not lost on union leaders."A loss here in Detroit would have a dampening effect on the labor movement around the country," said Richard Trumka, president of the United Mine Workers. "That's why this is significant."
Unions across the country have volunteered money and logistical support to the Detroit strikers, noted Barbara Easterling, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO.
"This is where we're going to draw the line in the sand," she said.
The strike is in its 11th week, with no end in sight.
Detroit News editor and publisher Robert H. Giles said he would like to see a negotiated settlement but is pessimistic about the chances for one.
"If things continue to go the way they have been," he has said, "we probably will hire a new work force and go on without the unions, or the unions can unconditionally surrender and go back to work."
He stressed this was his "observation about how things are going," not his objective.
The newspapers already have hired about 1,200 replacements, mostly in the production and circulation departments.
The strike is about wages, work rules and how strong a role the unions will continue to play in the papers' operations. Management says it wants greater control over staffing and the way its newspapers are distributed. The unions say management just wants them out, an allegation the newspapers deny.
The newspapers and their owners, two of the nation's largest newspaper companies, managed to publish a joint edition without interruption after about 2,500 workers represented by six unions went on strike July 13.
They resumed separate editions Sept. 18, dealing another blow to strikers' morale. Management hopes the move will bring back readers and advertisers who rejected the truncated combined edition.
The Free Press, owned by Knight-Ridder Inc., and the News, owned by Gannett Co. Inc., are competing papers with common business and production operations under a federally approved joint operating agreement.
"There's an unusual amount of loyalty Detroit readers have to one paper or the other," said Susie Ellwood, spokeswoman for the papers' business agency, Detroit Newspapers.
The newspapers have published by using managers, workers borrowed from sister papers in other states, strikers who have returned and replacements, but both newsrooms have smaller news staffs than before the strike - 23 percent smaller at the News and 37 percent leaner at the Free Press.
Giles said it was not too difficult getting the News published last week but that "clearly, we need to continue to add reporters to broaden our coverage."
The unions' tactics have included subscription and advertising boycotts, protests at two printing plants and legal action. They have gained the support of many of Detroit's religious leaders, who have criticized the newspapers' hiring of permanent replacements as unethical.
Giles responded with a public letter defending the practice as a way to ensure the papers' survival and to encourage the unions to "keep an eye on economic reality" in bargaining.
The unions' complaints to the Justice Department have led to an investigation into whether the combined edition violated the joint operating agreement. Additionally, the National Labor Relations Board is looking into charges that the company has bargained in bad faith.
Management is fighting the NLRB charges and says the agreement was amended a few years ago to allow for joint publication in the event of a strike.
But the unions hope the potential of large fines and an order to pay back wages to strikers if the charges are upheld eventually will force the companies to settle, said Joe Swickard, a striking Free Press reporter and spokesman for The Newspaper Guild of Detroit Local 22.