Newspapers: Striking Rumors

For the first time, Mayor Jerome Cavanagh stepped into Detroit's 17-week-old newspaper strike that has shut down both the Free Press and the News. "This continued strike is a disgrace bordering on calamity," he told both sides last week. "This has gone far beyond any reasonable bounds. We all share a responsibility to resolve this demoralizing situation quickly because of the unique and critical problems confronting our city at the present time."

Cavanagh was referring to rumors that had armed Negroes invading the white suburbs and armed white snipers riding through the Negro ghettos. Because of such rumors, both Negroes and whites are starting to arm themselves. The mayor and others thought that the News and the Free Press could have helped quiet such wild talk. As it is, the city no longer even has its three interim papers.

Teamster Gross. Since the strikeborn substitutes were unable to employ the total 1,000-man Teamster work force at the increased rates the strikers were demanding, the union simply shut them all down by refusing to make deliveries. Not that some Teamsters fared too badly while they lasted. A state senate investigating committee discovered that seven Teamsters had grossed about $300,000 during the eight weeks they operated a distributing company to circulate the Daily Express. It was also confirmed that other Teamsters had made arrangements to publish the Dispatch before the strike had begun, a situation that Michigan Senator Robert Griffin described as "nothing less than labor racketeering."

The strike came close to settlement last month when the publishers offered the Teamsters a $30-a-week raise over three years. Teamster International Vice President Robert Holmes recommended that the locals accept it. The Teamsters at the Free Press did, but the more militant members at the News turned it down. Now both sets of strikers are as mad at each other as they are at the publishers.

Even if the Teamsters settled, there is no telling what the other 13 newspaper unions would do. "It doesn't make a bit of difference what the Teamsters get or don't get," said a printer. "Nobody's going back to work until we get what we want."