By: Mark Fitzgerald Both Sides Await Court On Appeal Of NLRB Ruling
Just six days before the fifth anniversary of their walk-out at the Detroit Free
Press and The Detroit News, hundreds of former strikers learned
that their best hope of returning to work with back pay had been dashed.
In a strongly worded opinion handed down on Friday, a unanimous three-judge
panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington reversed the National
Labor Relation Board's (NLRB) 1998 order that the strike was caused by
management's unfair labor practices. Had the NLRB order held, the jointly
operated Free Press and News could have been forced to hire
back between 250 and 600 strikers who have remained out of work since the
unions unconditionally agreed to return to work.
Instead, the appeals court shredded the NLRB order, which it called 'legally
erroneous and unsupported by substantial evidence.' A key argument made by
the unions and supported by the NLRB was that the News had forced
the strike by unilaterally imposing a merit pay system. But the appeals court
said that argument was disingenuous: The Newspaper Guild local was
'unalterably opposed' to replacing across-the-board wage raises with merit pay
and was not prepared to bargain seriously.
'Today's decision will allow us to stop focusing on legal procedures and focus
on the bargaining process,' said Tim Kelleher, senior vice president of labor
relations for the joint operating agency Detroit Newspapers.
A spokesman said the unions are still deciding whether they will continue
litigation before the full appellate court or the U.S. Supreme Court.
'We're angry about this decision, that these unelected judges of Washington,
D.C., have torn apart the work the NLRB has done over all these years,' said
spokesman Sean Ellis.
The Detroit strike - which never stopped a day of publication - has
been seen as a failure for unions that decisively shifted the balance of power to
management across the industry. Union leaders counter that their boycott helped
sink the papers' total circulation from 886,000 at the time of the strike to
606,000 in the latest reporting period.
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Mark Fitzgerald (mfitzgerald@editorandpublisher.com) is editor
at large for Editor & Publisher magazine.
(c) Copyright 2000, Editor & Publisher
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