the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Sep 1, 2025
Thirty years ago, in July 1995, workers at The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press went on strike. It became an important strike because of the militancy of the newspaper workers and the activity of other workers who supported the strike.
Detroit newspaper workers had a history of going on strike. There were strikes in 1961, 1962, and 1963. The strike in 1967 lasted 9 months. But the 1995 strike was different because, while the newspaper workers were ready to strike, it was the newspaper’s corporate owners who provoked this strike.
In 1995, The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press were two of the biggest newspapers in the country. They said they were competitors, but they had merged their business and printing operations as the Detroit Newspaper Agency (DNA). The two papers were both part of large newspaper chains—the Detroit Free Press was owned by Knight-Ridder, while The Detroit News was owned by Gannett. Between them, they controlled over 120 newspapers across the country.
These two media corporations were planning to attack the jobs and wages of newspaper workers across the country and decided the best way to break workers’ resistance was to do it first in a union town like Detroit. Gannet and Knight-Ridder demanded that the Detroit newspaper workers accept drastic wage cuts, the elimination of many full-time jobs, turning other full-time jobs into part-time jobs and impose worse working conditions.
When the contract expired in April without an agreement, the DNA and newspaper workers unions agreed to extend the old contract, and the unions set a new deadline for July. But in July, the newspaper bosses refused to extend the contract any longer and unilaterally imposed new working conditions. On July 13, over 2,500 newspaper workers walked out on strike—pressmen, drivers, printers, mailers, carriers, reporters, and others.
The DNA had already been preparing for a strike and planned to use the strike to break the workers’ unions. Before the strike even began, the DNA had hired armed security and lined up replacement workers. On Day One, the two papers put out a single joint newspaper, using a few skilled workers who had settled their separate contract, a few writers who crossed the picket lines and hundreds of strikebreakers brought in from around the country.
From the beginning of the strike, the newspaper workers put up large, enthusiastic picket lines. But they soon realized this would be a bigger fight than they thought. The strikers began to send out roving squads, using guerrilla tactics to disrupt the sale and distribution of the newspapers. In 1995, many more newspapers were sold than today. Strikers made sure the boxes where people bought newspapers suddenly didn’t work anymore. Strikers went to shopping centers, plant gates, churches and union meetings to talk about their strike. Workers from other workplaces came to walk the picket lines. The strikers asked people to stop buying the newspaper, which many workers did. Newspapers sales dropped drastically, and some advertisers backed out.
The newspapers started losing a lot of money. But the corporate bosses were ready to accept short-term losses in Detroit in order bring down the wages, benefits and eliminate jobs for newspaper workers across the country. They upped their attacks on the newspaper strikers, threatening to permanently replace them if they did not surrender and immediately return to work. The publisher of The Detroit News said “We’re going to hire a whole new work force and go on without unions, or they can surrender unconditionally and salvage what they can.”
Up to that point, the leaders of other unions in Detroit, like the UAW, had given verbal and some financial support to the newspaper strikers. But after the threats to break the newspaper unions, leaders of the UAW and other unions began to call on their members to actively support the strike.
On the Saturday before Labor Day, union leaders organized a march to the newspaper printing plant where the papers were printing their profitable Sunday paper. Thousands of workers, strikers and strike supporters marched to the plant and then surrounded it, blocking all the gates. Up until that point of the strike, the police had been able to push aside picketers and keep the plants gate open. But on that Saturday night, when the police and the private security goons tried to open the roads to the printing plant, workers pushed them back, forcing the police and thugs to retreat. Workers held the picket lines almost all night, stopping the newspapers from getting out their Sunday paper until it was too late to get the papers delivered and sold.
The following Saturday night, thousands of workers came out again. Again, the picket lines were so massive that the police and security could not clear the driveways to get out the delivery trucks filled with the Sunday papers. The newspaper bosses even hired a helicopter to fly over the picket line, pick up a few newspapers inside and fly them out. If that was meant to be a scare tactic, it failed. Workers on the picket lines laughed, knowing that the cost to rent the helicopter was far more than the newspapers would get for selling the handful of papers it was able to carry out.
On the following Saturday nights, strikers and other workers went to distribution centers, where the papers were sent before going out to stores and newspaper boxes. Workers blocked the driveways and roads, often fighting with the security thugs, sometimes clashing with the police. The vehicles of scab workers and hired goons ended up with a lot of broken windows.
The fight by the newspaper strikers and their supporters had grabbed the attention of the whole working class in the Detroit area. The annual Labor Day parade, led by the newspaper strikers, was the largest in many years, about 50,000 people marched in downtown Detroit and then surrounded newspaper headquarters. This militant strike, going beyond ordinary picketing, was becoming a problem for the newspaper bosses. But not only for them. It was also becoming a problem for the Detroit Three auto companies and the other companies in Detroit whose workers were out in the streets with the strikers. These companies feared workers might be getting ideas about making their own fight against what they were facing from their own bosses.
The corporate bosses, like they always do, used the state apparatus against the strike. Their police were not having much success breaking the picket lines, or at least there were big fights every time they tried. So, the corporate bosses used the courts to attack the strikers. Judges granted injunctions to limit the number of picketers at the printing plant and distribution centers.
Some of the most active and militant striking newspaper workers wanted to challenge and even defy the injunctions. But the newspaper workers had not found the way to have any real control over the strike and to make their own decisions. The real decision-making and control of the strike was in the hands of the union leaders, both in the newspaper unions and other unions in Detroit. These union leaders, fearing the high fines and possible arrests that judges could impose on the unions, told workers to obey the injunction and stop the mass picketing. They told the workers to put their faith on rulings by the court and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
This decision by the union leaders derailed the strike. When the mass picketing stopped, it changed the dynamic of the strike and limited its possibilities. It ended the activity of the many workers who had joined the newspaper strikers on the picket lines. The newspaper workers continued to strike, but the newspapers were able to put out the papers using replacement workers. After a year-and-half on strike, the union leaders told the workers to accept defeat and go back to work under the company’s conditions. Only a few strikers were even allowed to go back, the company had permanently replaced most strikers, the rest would have to wait for job openings. Even then, a few newspaper strikers continued their own guerrilla war against the papers. Most of the strikers never went back to work for the Free Press and News.
Many working people in the Detroit area continued to boycott the newspaper. In fact, the Free Press and Detroit News have never regained the sales they had before the strike.
The two newspapers took a great financial loss. It is estimated they lost as much as million dollars during the strike. Gannet and Knight-Ridder took a big hit in Detroit, but they used the length of the Detroit strike to try to scare other newspaper workers and pressure them to accept concessions, which many of them did.
The Detroit newspaper strike held the possibility of a much different outcome. But that would have taken a different policy than the one put forward by the union leaders who led this strike.
The UAW and the newspaper union leaders had called on workers to join the newspaper picket lines, and even go up against the police—up to a point. But when push came to shove, workers were told to back down and go along with the courts.
The reformist policy of the union during this strike was the norm, not the exception. U.S. unions operated on a reformist and corporate basis. Strikes were considered to be the property of a single union and company. This approach may have called for the active support of other workers from other companies and unions, but limited that activity to support.
When the bosses mobilize their courts and capital to break a strike, individual groups of workers rarely have the power to force them back. The union officialdom, which guards its relationship with the bosses and its treasury, moves to keep the fight confined when exactly the opposite is necessary.
All workers are facing corporate bosses who are part of one class—the capitalist class. To go up against that alignment, workers need the broadest base possible in their own class.
The militancy of the newspaper strikers and the other workers who joined the picket lines meant that the newspaper strike had the possibility of turning into a mass strike—the kind of fight that could have backed down, not just the police and courts, but Wall Street bosses and banks.
It is not a formula for winning, because Wall Street and the banks and the bosses are organized and the working class is not at that level. For as long as capitalism remains the dominant system, workers will be forced back.
But in wider fights and in mass strikes, workers can escape the narrow boundaries of reformism to develop a revolutionary perspective, to fight for their real class interests and to not hesitate to take their fight as far as it can go. Finally to tear the bosses system down and replace it with a new one.