Used as ‘Bait’ for Strikers, 2 N.Y. Daily News Replacement Drivers Say

Two men hired by the New York Daily News as replacement drivers say they quit their jobs because they were being used as “bait” for attacks by striking workers, it was reported today.

The men said some workers carried video cameras with orders to get any evidence of violence to use in court against strikers.

“We were bait,” Jim McCully of Clarksville, Tenn., told the New York Times. “The bottom line was that we were supposed to be cheese for the rats.”

The development came as Daily News management said it invited the city’s other major dailies and news magazines to join a public campaign condemning violence caused by striking members of unions employed at the paper.

A representative of the striking unions said they would hold the publications “legally responsible for disseminating a false charge.”

The 21-day-old strike has been punctuated by attacks on delivery trucks and skirmishes among strikers, replacement drivers and security guards.

The report said the replacement workers were hired through Securex, a Kentucky security company.

McCully said the pay was to be about $700 a week for a 12-hour day, 84-hour week. The job was to last 120 days, with a $1,500 bonus for anyone completing the full tour.

McCully said that at their orientation session on Nov. 3, Bill Mills, the operations director for Securex, said: “Your job is to get documentation on film of union members breaking your necks. We need the evidence so we can go to court and freeze the assets of the union.”