By Joel Thurtell
A longtime Detroit Free Press employee and Newspaper Guild member who was a loyal striker in the 1990s, who used to refer to johnny-come-lately Free Press owner Gannett as “evil,” recently told me Gannett is “not so bad.”
Another Free Press employee and Guild member who is sweating under threat of being laid off by Gannett told me Gannett is actually better for the commoner and less elitist than former Free Press owner Knight-Ridder.
I took a buyout from the Free Press in November 2007, slightly more than two years after the August 5, 2005 surprise announcement that Knight-Ridder had sold the paper to Gannett. I’d worked 23 years at the Free Press, if you count the two years and three months I was on strike in 1995-97.
There are certain dates in Free Press history that are marked indelibly in my memory. Etched in black. July 13, 1995 is foremost. That’s when, led by Gannett, unions were locked out of the Detroit dailies (yes, they actually delivered the paper or a combined version of it seven days a week in those days of yesteryear), a company move which an administrative judge later ruled had forced a strike that ran for years and disrupted thousands of lives.
The strike was driven by Gannett in a naked play to break the unions in Detroit.
Instead of destroying the unions, the Gannettoids devastated two once-great newspapers, permanently alienating hundreds of thousands of readers in a strong union region. Gannett was in the driver’s seat, with Knight-Ridder a silent though willing accessory as the two biggest newspaper chains in the country sought to tame labor with their U.S. Supreme Court-approved newspaper monopoly.
Instead, the geniuses of McLean, Virginia set the scene for their own extinction.
They jettisoned huge numbers of readers seemingly without a care and acted as if that stupid and malignant history never occurred. I’ve sat in meetings with Gannet and for that matter, Knight-Ridder honchos who would moan the decline of circulation and advertising in the Detroit papers without ever mentioning the root cause: They did it to themselves by provoking that godawful strike.
As any doctor will tell you, refusing to talk about your disease is a good way to ensure your demise.
And yet I’m told by someone who knows better, that Gannett “is not so bad.”
They paid the municipal costs of cops working overtime to bash on strikers.
Their thugs beat up lawfully-picketing strikers.
Those who eventually returned to work were harassed in the workplace.
They violate union contracts and boast that they don’t even read them.
Yet they failed to break the unions.
In their megalomania and in defiance of anti-trust laws, they gobbled up surrounding suburban newspaper chains, their direct competitors, and are in the process of merging and shutting down the Observer & Eccentric and Mirror newspapers.
Screw the workers, screw the community.
Through their own corporate greed they are destroying news organizations that served metro Detroiters well for generations. Why, the Free Press, now being decimated with all the rest, is the oldest newspaper in Michigan.
“Not so bad”?
They have bought out or laid off hundreds of employees at their Detroit-based monopoly while the U.S. Justice Department snoozes.
“Not so bad”?
I recall the time I was asked to be the union rep for a writer accused of an ethical lapse. I’ll never forget the amazing kangaroo court scene I watched as Free Press Editor Paul Anger in a few angry words fired the reporter. The same editor was even angrier some months later when an arbitrator ordered the paper to reinstate that reporter with back pay because the boobies had wrongly dismissed him.
“Not so bad”?
Gannett bosses this week announced they’re canning 20 Free Press staffers who belong to the Newspaper Guild. With the firings of five non-union workers this week, the number may actually be 25. In all, though, they’re talking about dumping between 100 and 150 workers. “Not so bad.”
I’d say to those people who think Gannett is “not so bad” that they’d best be glad they have the Guild. Look at the five who were axed this week: Four of the five are female.
Does that give you an idea of how “not so bad” this chain is?
Where the bosses had a free hand, 80 percent of the firings are women.
“Not so bad,” indeed.
In the bargaining unit, the contract calls for layoffs by seniority.
Why do people think that Gannett is okay?
They’re scared witless, that’s why.
Inside that building, it’s hard to keep independent mental bearings.
You see the abusers and you want them to like you.
Maybe if they like you, they won’t fire you.
Guess if you’re a woman, you’d have to work really, really hard to make them like you.
And then you’d be out the door anyway.
A little-known fact that came out of that arbitration I mentioned: An admission by management that assignments of reporters to the now-defunct Community Free Press was a “demotion.”
Several of those “demotees,” including me, were older workers. The message was not lost on our younger colleagues.
The seeds of terror are many.
The truth is, the Gannetoids don’t like anybody.
What they really like is the profit margin.
Meanwhile, union officials are struggling to compile seniority charts as the ugly bloodbath begins. In a month, if too few union members offer to leave on their own, the job bumping will begin. Someone who’s, say, a photo editor or a copy editor with a few months seniority will bump back to his/her old classification, thus nudging someone less senior towards the door.
Let the peons eat each other.
Neat scheme by Gannett: The workers try to screw each other while the high and mighty bosses sit in their big offices and gloat.
“Not so bad.”
I’ll tell you when Gannett will be “not so bad.”
When they fold their cherished monopoly for good and drag their miserable, rotten asses out of Detroit.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
