N.Y. Daily News Strike Turns Into War : Labor: The editorial workers’ union joins eight others in walkout. Violence flares as the paper continues to publish with substitute employees.

The union representing editorial employees at the New York Daily News joined eight other unions Friday in striking the financially troubled tabloid, creating an all-out labor war that has been marked by violence and threatens the paper’s survival.

About 800 members of the Newspaper Guild of New York cast their lot with about 1,800 other striking union members as the Daily News’ management began importing substitute newsroom workers from newspapers owned by its parent firm, the Tribune Co., in Chicago and Orlando, Fla., to help keep the paper going.

The Newspaper Guild had originally planned simply to honor picket lines, including the one at the News’ headquarters in Manhattan. But management issued an ultimatum Friday: “Come in (to work) quickly or you will be considered striking and will be replaced,” as Daily News spokeswoman Lisa Robinson put it.

With that threat, said local Guild President Barry Lipton, the editorial employees decided almost immediately at an afternoon meeting to go on strike rather than to work with any “imported scabs and goons.”

Daily News executives vowed to continue publishing the paper despite the massive walkout, which was precipitated early Thursday by a dispute at the paper’s Brooklyn printing plant over a worker’s right to perform his job while sitting down.

By using members of management and replacement workers, the newspaper produced 611,000 copies of an abbreviated edition on Friday, News spokesmen said. The normal daily circulation is almost 1.2 million, the second highest for a U.S. metropolitan daily after the Los Angeles Times.

But distribution of the 48-page single edition--less than half its normal size--was spotty throughout the city as non-union drivers leaving the paper’s three separate printing facilities were forced to run gantlets of protesters pelting their trucks with bricks, stones, bottles and eggs.

“The plan is to improve performance each day until normal distribution is reached,” newspaper executives said in a statement. “We have tremendous support from city and state police authorities. We are confident that the . . . violence by these strikers can be contained.”

Representatives of both management and labor said that no negotiations between the two sides were in the offing.

Several striking employees said they feared an escalation of the violence. “The only way the unions can hurt the paper is to thwart it from being delivered,” said a reporter who asked to remain anonymous.

At least 11 arrests have been made since the strike started, including those of two men in connection with the firebombing of a delivery truck. No major injuries have been reported, however.

The strike capped a 10-month dispute over management’s efforts to gain more control over wages and working conditions at the paper. The Daily News has lost about $115 million over the last decade and has seen daily circulation slip by about 700,000.

But labor leaders contend that management wants to break the unions and was determined to provoke a strike to achieve that end.

The unions have been working without a contract since the end of March, and negotiations had stalemated.

Theodore W. Kheel, an adviser to the Allied Printing Trades Council, a coalition representing all 10 unions at the News, contended that replacement of striking workers at the paper effectively forecloses any labor settlement.

“Even if the unions agreed to 100% of what the paper wanted, those people who have been replaced could not go back to work, and that would be totally unacceptable,” he said. “This paper is dead. It’s only a matter of time before the funeral ceremonies are held.”

Only the typographers’ union, whose 200 members have lifetime guaranteed jobs, is not involved in the strike.

The strike was started by the drivers’ union Thursday after a walkout prompted by an incident in which a supervisor told a driver to stand as he worked on a machine that bundles newspapers. The driver claimed that a leg injury prevented him from standing and that the job could be performed as easily while sitting.