N.Y. Post Escapes Brush With Death; Guild Vote Monday : Media: Details of the proposal weren’t disclosed. But all of its unions except one settled with America’s oldest continuously published daily newspaper.

The owner of the New York Post has agreed to delay by three days his threat to close down the brassy tabloid to give a union time to vote on a proposal to stem its $20-million-a-year losses.

Peter S. Kalikow, who has lost more than $100 million on the paper, delayed the threatened shutdown to allow the paper’s Newspaper Guild to present a giveback proposal to its 352 members Monday evening. Neither side would disclose the contents of the proposal, but sources said it would cut back union members to a four-day week and reduce the paper’s staff by 43 guild members.

The Post’s eight other unions agreed to concessions earlier Friday.

At a press conference held by union and management officials just before midnight, Guild President Barry Lipton said the deal was “the best we could do. . . . It’s up to the members.”

Kalikow, for his part, vowed that “if they turn it down, the paper will stop publishing immediately.”

Although the Post has lost money for decades, its losses have lately deepened amid a regional recession and bruising competition from the city’s other daily newspapers, which include the Daily News, New York Times and New York Newsday, the city’s edition of the big Long Island daily. Newsday is owned by Times Mirror Co. of Los Angeles, which also publishes the Los Angeles Times.

The Post is the nation’s oldest continuously published daily newspaper. It was founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton to serve an elite audience in the bustling port city. Now its audience is largely blue collar, and its name has become synonymous with an old-fashioned tabloid journalism that heeds few bounds as it strives to shock and entertain.

Kalikow, a major New York real estate developer, bought the paper in 1988 from media magnate Rupert Murdoch, who lost more than $150 million during his 12-year ownership of the property. Kalikow aides have said that with the real estate market in a deep slump, Kalikow’s banks had recently pressured him to cut the Post’s losses.

Officials said the concession package would save the paper more than $20 million a year.

The owner originally demanded that the guild agree to a 42% cut in wages and benefits for the editorial and advertising employees it represents. The proposal to be considered Monday will also be difficult for members to accept.

Indeed, sources said, the guild’s negotiating committee voted 7 to 3 to reject the offer. But all agreed that it should be presented to the membership for their approval.

Post staff members had congregated in the newsroom all day, cracking grim jokes about the possible shutdown of the paper. But when the news came, there were no cheers.

“Most people here are just numb,” said one staff member, predicting that the vote could still go against the proposal.

“It would be a very, very sad thing for this city to lose this scrappy, irreverent paper,” said Bill Hoffmann, a Post reporter. “This paper is New York.”

The paper’s staff had spent Friday preparing two separate papers: one announcing the demise of the Post and a second proclaiming the paper’s salvation.

Kalikow had written separate columns for the two possible papers, and other reporters had been assigned to write stories on such subjects as the paper’s colorful history, the headlines for which it has become so famous and its abrupt demise.

But at midnight, Post editors scrambled to rewrite their stories to explain that the decision had simply been delayed.

In the early evening, the Post’s editors had tentatively chosen “We’re Still Here” as a front-page headline if the talks were successful. Some staff members had proposed various grim headlines for use if the talks failed, including, “Elvis, Here We Come.”

Staff members spent the day cleaning out their desks, revising resumes or trying to contact prospective employers.

“I hope we’re here Monday, but you can never tell if they’ll slap a padlock on tonight,” reporter Hoffmann said before the other unions settled.

Reporters and editors gathered around television sets awaiting the news. Some noted the irony of this, since television’s advent has been a key reason that the Post has struggled so hard to remain afloat.

The front page on the paper’s Friday’s editions was “Deadline . . . 8 P.M.” An editorial cartoon depicted Kalikow and editor Jerry Nachman escorting a figure wearing a New York Post T-shirt down a prison block hallway labeled “Death Row.” Murdoch threatened to close the Post in 1988 before he sold it to Kalikow. The paper was also near a shutdown in 1976, when former owner Dorothy Schiff sold it to Murdoch.