Before the ink could dry on the National Labor Relations Board's ruling in the long-running Detroit Newspapers labor dispute, appeals were filed that may take months to resolve. "The courts have busy dockets," says William Schaub, NLRB regional director in Detroit. "A year would not surprise me." After that, a decision handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals could even go to the U.S. Supreme Court, a step that can last years.

Nonetheless, the August 27 decision brought the three-year-old dispute a giant step closer to its finale. The five-member NLRB unanimously found the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press guilty of unfair labor practices, ranging from illegal implementation of merit pay proposals prior to the strike to a failure to offer reinstatement to workers after it ended.

And while corporations may permanently replace workers who strike over economic issues, that is not the case when it comes to a strike over labor practices. So the NLRB ordered the papers to return remaining locked-out employees to their jobs -- with back pay dating to February 14, 1997, when the unions officially ended their strike. That will happen only when appeals are exhausted, or if the two sides reach an agreement outside the courts.

Predictably, the unions and the newspapers disagree about just how many former employees might eventually be affected, and how much back pay is therefore involved. Since the strike ended in 1997, the newspapers have rehired just 708 former strikers, and they have vowed that the approximately 900 replacement workers hired during the strike will not lose their jobs. The unions' goal is to return all locked-out workers who want to go back. Shawn Ellis, spokesman for the Metropolitan Council of Newspaper Unions, which represents the six striking unions, says that of the approximately 2,500 employees who walked out in 1995, fully 2,000 made an unconditional offer to return in 1997. While some of those people have since moved away, changed careers, or otherwise lost interest in going back, Ellis estimates that about 1,200 locked-out workers remain eligible.

Detroit Newspapers, which runs the two papers via a joint operating agreement, has a far shorter list of former employees it considers eligible to return to work -- 620, according spokesperson Susie Ellwood. "I know the numbers aren't the same," says Ellwood. "and I know ours are right." Part of the dispute centers on the Detroit Newspapers unwillingness to include employees it discharged for "strike misconduct." Most of those people are appealing their terminations to the NLRB.

Despite the bitterness of the long dispute, there is some hope that the two sides can bridge their differences outside the legal system -- in negotiations. In August, the Federal Mediation Office requested a return to the bargaining table. A confidentiality agreement prevents either side from discussing the ensuing talks, but Schaub, for one, hopes that they might bring this long dispute to an end.

"It's time to start examining how many of [these workers] really want to come back," he says. "Compliance with the rulings might not be as onerous as previously thought."

Circulation at Gannett's News and Knight-Ridder's Free Press has dropped significantly since the strike began. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, their combined daily circulation was 865,374 at the start of the strike in July 1995. It was 613,509 as of the most recent audit, in March.

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