Editorial Employees Picket Daily News : Labor: During a midday demonstration, Newspaper Guild members called the company’s contract wage proposal ‘ridiculously low.’

About 70 reporters, photographers and other editorial employees of the Daily News picketed the newspaper’s Woodland Hills headquarters Monday to demonstrate their unhappiness with contract proposals made by Daily News management.

The Los Angeles Newspaper Guild, a union that the editorial workers elected in April, 1989, to represent them in contract negotiations, organized the lunch-hour “informational picket.” The workers previously had been non-union.

The union and the newspaper have held 29 bargaining sessions in attempting to agree on their first contract, said Jim Smith, administrative officer of the Guild. The next meeting is scheduled for Thursday.

Chief among the workers’ complaints was the wage proposal made by the newspaper, which is owned by financier Jack Kent Cooke of Middleburg, Va. Cooke bought the newspaper for $176 million from Tribune Co. in Chicago in 1985.

James Lacher, executive vice president of Cooke Media Group Inc., declined to comment on the contract talks or the picketing. The Daily News is part of Cooke Media, a holding company that also owns several cable-television properties and shares headquarters with the Daily News.

The Daily News is offering experienced reporters, copy editors and other editorial employees $650 a week for the first year of a three-year contract, with virtually no increase the second year and a 1.5% hike the third year, said Smith, who dismissed the amount as “ridiculously low.” He said the first-year sum is “about $100 a week less than surrounding papers and $200 a week less than at the (Los Angeles) Times.”

In addition, many experienced Daily News editorial workers already earn $575 to $650 a week, so for some there would be virtually no pay hike, after taking inflation into account, Smith said. The Guild is seeking $800 a week for the first year, he said.

Bruce Britt, a rock-music critic at the newspaper, said as he walked the picket line that the Daily News has “200,000-plus circulation, and it pays less than a lot of 100,000-plus papers. That seems like a crime to us.”

The Daily News’ circulation in the six months ended March 31, the most recent period for which data is available, averaged 202,384 weekdays and 214,205 on Sundays, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Maternity leave, severance pay, child care and affirmative action policies are also among the topics being negotiated, Smith said.