Editorial Staff at Daily News Votes for Union : Margin Is 114-60; Guild Seeks Other Employees

Reporters, photographers, copy editors and artists at the Daily News voted 114-60 for the Los Angeles Newspaper Guild as their union representative, according to results made public Thursday.

The election comes about three years after editorial employees, who have been nonunion, first contacted the union about representing them as their bargaining agent.

Jim Smith, administrative officer for the local unit of the Guild, said that the union will continue trying to organize employees in the newspaper’s circulation, advertising, finance and marketing departments. Pressmen, composing room employees and paper handlers at the newspaper already are represented by other unions.

The Daily News, based in Woodland Hills, is owned by sports and cable-television entrepreneur Jack Kent Cooke, who paid $176 million in 1985 to buy the newspaper from the Tribune Co. in Chicago.

Circulation Figures

In the six months ended last Sept. 30, the newspaper’s circulation averaged 170,809 daily and 197,311 on Sunday, according to numbers reported to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Cooke could not be reached for comment. In a prepared statement, Daily News Editor Robert W. Burdick said: “Our employees have voted for a union and so be it. Our goal remains to produce the very best newspaper we can for Daily News readers and we have every intention of doing this.”

Smith said the vote in favor of the Guild was expected and that the main issue in the campaign was “participation in the workplace,” although money also was an important issue. He said most of the editorial employees at the newspaper make from $550 to $650 a week. By contrast, Smith said, the minimum scale for editorial employees with five years experience at the Long Beach Press-Telegram, a smaller Guild-represented newspaper, is $709 a week.

Sidney Rosen, assistant to the regional director at the Westwood office of the National Labor Relations Board, said that under federal law the newspaper has until next Thursday to file any objections to the election.

If the Daily News does not object, he said, then NLRB officials would certify the results, which would clear the way for bargaining to start.