STRIKE: The DAILY NEWS War and the Future of American Labor By Richard Vigilante

FROM the jacket: " While public officials and politicians looked the other way, a brilliant but ruthless business empire squared off against 9 desperate unions-one with mafia ties-convinced they must fight or die.It was a war for one of America's great newspapers. And both sides seemed willing to destroy the paper to save it.





pages 221-222. " In just five days, from October 27 to 31, nearly 100 newsdealers told either the NEWS or the police that they had been threatened or attacked by strikers, most of them apparently NMDU members.

The strikers had found the tactic that would win them the strike. In the next three months there were hundreds of acts of violence or vandalism directed against dealers selling the NEWS, and THOUSANDS of threas or instances of harassment.

Union leaders would repeatedly claim that violence was rare, scattered, and spontaneous, the work of a few men suddenly losing their tempers after being driven to the edge by the company.

BUT THE SWORN TESTIMONY OF NEWSDEALERS, PRESS REPORTS, COMPANY RECORDS, AND INTERVIEWS with NMDU leaders suggests a more systematic campaign.

In many cases the same dealers were threatened repeatedly until they stopped carrying the NEWS. Even after doing so they were visited repeatedly, in some cases daily, by men checking to make sure the NEWS was still unavailable or reminding their windows could be smashed, their stores burned or bombed, or they and their employees attacked if they resumed selling the paper.

A number of dealers also charged that NMDU drivers for the POST or the TIMES told the dealers that if they carried the NEWS they would not get the other papers.

By company count there were more than 2,000 'security incidents' of all sorts and in all jurisdictions during the months of the strike. This is almost certainly an undercount, since in many cases company records count multiple intimidating visits to the same dealer as a single incident.

The New York Police Department recorded morethan 560 strike-related incidents including numerous instances of harassment or intimidation or threats of arson or bombings, dozens of assaults, several actual or attempted bombings and OZENS OF CASES OF ARSON and OTHER DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY."

40 trucks had the radiators drilled and many tires were slashed.