[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 120 (Thursday, September 5, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1537]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               DETROIT NEWSPAPERS AND THE 14-MONTH STRIKE

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JOHN CONYERS, JR.

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 5, 1996

  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, In the 1930's and 1940's, Mahatma Gandhi 
used nonviolent civil disobedience to win independence for India. In 
the 1950's and 1960's, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., used nonviolent 
civil disobedience in the struggle against racial discrimination in the 
United States. In the late 1980's opponents of apartheid engaged in 
nonviolent civil disobedience outside the South African Embassy in 
Washington, DC. Last week, some of the Nation's top labor leaders and 
politicians were arrested in a nonviolent sit-in on the front steps of 
the Detroit newspapers which are embroiled in a 14-month strike that 
has had a devastating impact on 2,000 striking workers and their 
families.
  The Detroit sit-in, which marked the first time labor leader John 
Sweeney has been arrested since becoming president of the AFL-CIO, took 
place on the 414th day of a strike in which the Detroit Free Press and 
the Detroit News are losing more than $5,000 an hour--or about $1 
million a week.
  I was among the 21 protestors who blocked access to the newspaper 
building on the Friday before Labor Day. We took nonviolent action to 
reaffirm the validity of the collective bargaining process and to focus 
attention on the struggle of working class people to secure decent wage 
jobs. In the tradition of civil rights protests, we knowingly broke the 
law to demonstrate our moral resolve to force the newspapers to bargain 
fairly with the strikers.
  Among the strikers and supporters watching us that day were a middle-
aged African-American man with heart disease who has lost his home and 
his health insurance; a teenaged girl who talks wistfully of prestrike 
days when her father had the money to take the family to Detroit Red 
Wings games, and a striker's wife who lost her 15-year job around the 
same time her husband lost his.
  Each of these people represents untold thousands of Americans whose 
lives have been uprooted by socially myopic companies that ignore their 
responsibility to be fair and respectful to employees and the 
community.
  The outcome of this strike will resonate across the country. If the 
newspapers can destroy the unions in Detroit, the future of all unions 
is in jeopardy. It is time for people of good will to join me and 
others in urging the Detroit newspapers and the striking workers to 
settle this dispute at the bargaining table or to submit to binding 
arbitration.
  Common sense, decency and historical tradition demand that this labor 
dispute be brought to a quick and just conclusion.

                          ____________________