The Detroit Newspaper Guild knows there are no small battles, whether you’re 2,000 workers striking the city’s daily papers or five workers brawling with the Catholic Church.
Five workers, of course, don’t get nearly so much attention, but Detroit Guild President Lou Mleczko is working on that, as he fights to protect the jobs of the small editorial and business staff at the Michigan Catholic.
Through letters to community and labor organizations, as well as speaking engagements and a recent radio interview, Mleczko and the paper’s bargaining team are reaching out to allies for support.
At issue is the Detroit Archdiocese’s refusal to extend the Guild’s jurisdiction to the Michigan Catholic’s website. The newspaper, published every two weeks, once employed a couple of dozen workers and until a few years ago still had a staff of nine or 10.
The remaining five workers, who have at least 10 and up to 20 years of experience at the newspaper, worry their jobs could be next. Even if one or two of them were offered web-based work, the church seems determined that those jobs won’t come with union benefits – despite the bargaining team's ample evidence that Guild contracts at newspapers across the country are being expanded to cover web publications.
“In March, the new managing editor of The Michigan Catholic wrote to the readership boasting about the digital future of the newspaper, and that is exactly our fear,” Mleczko said. “At our last bargaining session, we said we will drop our demand for language regarding the digital work, if you agree in writing the print edition will remain open for the life of the three-year contract. They wouldn’t do that.”
Every other major contract issue has been resolved, he said, with members agreeing to concessions including a longer workweek and two-tier wage scale, on top of having had no raises for five years.
Mleczko and the bargaining team have written to Detroit’s archbishop, so far to no avail, despite pointing out that papal encyclicals declare the moral right of workers to join unions and bargain collectively.
“We have made sacrifices to help The Michigan Catholic,” the workers wrote Feb. 6. “We did so out of a realistic concern for the financial condition and future of the paper… What we wanted in exchange for these concessions was work. Our primary issue was job security.”
Dug Rusin, a graphic designer at the paper for 18 years, said the church higher-ups “get a little cranky when you point out that their actions are going against principles that your organization represents."
The Guild bargaining team has long made suggestions to help build the paper’s circulation and advertising, but Rusin said the church seems intent on changes that are “drilling new holes in a leaky boat” rather than patching existing holes.
Noting that he’s negotiated contracts at the Michigan Catholic since 1995, Mleczko said, “in virtually every round, the Guild committee has urged, begged, pleaded, given ideas of how to boost circulation, sell more advertising, increase content, and repeatedly it’s fallen on deaf ears.”
Rusin said the church presented the committee with financial spreadsheets, claiming the newspaper – which is meant to be self-supporting – was $100,000 in the hole. “We sat down afterwards and looked at the numbers and it wasn’t true,” he said. “We were 100 grand in the black.”
That kind of behavior is eroding workers’ trust and turning what used to be fairly low-key negotiations into something much more combative, Rusin said.
“We’re not asking for the world,” he said. “It used to be in bargaining, we’d throw things on our list, like asking the paper to pay for our parking downtown. We knew we’d never get it, but it was fun to throw it in. Now it’s gotten more aggressive, and it’s our jobs that are at stake.”
Photo: Dug Rusin
