Daily News Strike Goes According to Plan : NEWS ANALYSIS

The strike by unions at the New York Daily News has already offered this historic measure of the state of organized labor: Never before has a newspaper in this union town successfully produced and delivered papers when its workers were on strike.

And as this most unusual of labor actions plays out, what is remarkable is the degree to which management has scripted what has occurred.

Tribune Co. of Chicago, which owns the Daily News, has been preparing for the strike that began last Thursday for nearly two years, from training its managers to edit and produce the paper, to privately outlining in an interview with The Times where the strike would start first. To a large degree, the unions were trying to avoid striking, feeling that doing so would either result in breaking the unions or killing the paper.

If the News succeeds and the strike fails, union leaders fear that it will be the most visible defeat for labor since the air traffic controllers strike of 1981.

Key to the News’ strategy was the perception it created that, if it did not win unconditional surrender by labor, Tribune Co. was willing to close the nation’s second-largest paper.

Management apparently was so confident of its strategy that it made only a modest attempt to pursue the classic tack of negotiating contracts with some unions, thereby dividing and isolating the remaining ones most likely to strike.

Finally, to highlight the degree to which union membership has become a matter of family legacy, the News is replacing many of the mostly white striking drivers and pressmen with women and minorities who had been unable to break into the union ranks.

“This is a win-win situation for the Tribune Co.,” said Theodore W. Kheel, a labor lawyer who is serving as the unions’ principal adviser. “And it is a no-win situation for the employees.”

“It’s like the people who built the atomic bomb,” said Stuart Marques, one of the News’ top reporters. “From day one, they had this belief that they can put it out without any of the unions. They worked it out on paper. . . . They have this beautiful bomb, and they want to see if it works.”

After five days, the momentum seems to be with management. The News claimed to have delivered 906,000 papers on Monday, a third more than the day before and not far short of its 1.18-million daily circulation.

But spot checks of newsstands revealed that the paper was hard to find. News spokesman John Sloan said, “Due to widespread vandalism to newspapers once they are delivered to newsstands, the Daily News may be unavailable at some locations.”

The dispute has been marked by bitterness, violence and a substantial police presence, with more than 40 strikers arrested since early Thursday.

“We are not free to picket any more like we used to,” said Mike Alvino, president of the drivers union, who complained that police kept strikers behind police lines to allow delivery trucks to get out of the News printing plants. “We’re penned up like cattle. I don’t know what free collective bargaining is anymore when management uses taxpayers’ money” to stop the unions.

The strike began over a seemingly minor incident, when an employee at the Brooklyn printing plant wanted to do his job sitting down and was ordered to stand. Angry drivers staged an impromptu walkout over what appeared to them to be abusive and provocative behavior.

In less than an hour, the News exercised its legal option to fire the 200 drivers it said had walked out, and it trucked in permanent replacements who were already hired and ready to go.

The next day, nine of the 10 unions said they would honor the picket lines. When the paper announced that anyone not reporting to work would be considered on strike, the unions’ 2,600 workers went out. By then, the paper had hired several dozen permanent replacements and was flying in reporters from Tribune Co.’s Florida and Chicago papers to work temporarily.

To a large degree, management had been anticipating this scenario since it began preparing nearly two years ago to negotiate new labor contracts.

That was also when Charles Brumback became chairman of Tribune Co., an event that News Publisher Jim Hoge said changed the “focus and speed” of the now two-decade effort to revive the News. The word on Wall Street was that Brumback wanted it resolved--one way or another.

The company announced that it would hold off on plans to install new presses costing $300 million to $500 million, hired a famous anti-union law firm and set about preparing what Hoge called in an interview last March the most complete plan to survive a strike in the history of New York.

The company hired paramilitary guards at printing sites. It sent non-union employees to Florida to train as platemakers and press operators and, in the words of one editor, to be “brainwashed.” And it made clear that it wanted to throw out all existing labor contracts and start from scratch.

The object, Hoge explained, was to allow management to regain control of hiring, staffing and salaries that he said cost the paper $50 million to $70 million annually in labor “abuses.”

Last March, about a week before the old contracts expired, a source at Tribune Co. closely familiar with the negotiations said in an interview that eventually the drivers would have to strike, because the company would never offer them a contract they would deem acceptable.

The key, the executive and others said, would then be whether the company could produce the paper in defiance of a strike. If it could, the paper would win. If it could not, the paper would likely die. So far, that prediction appears accurate.

At the same time, George McDonald, president of the Allied Printing Trade Council, said in a separate interview that the unions feared that if they struck, they would either lose or be blamed for killing the paper.

The paper’s negotiating team, the Tennessee law firm of King & Ballow, assumed what one union member involved called an “ominous” tone in talks. At the deadline time, the paper made last-minute, take-it-or-leave-it offers of pay raises to at least three unions in exchange for relinquishing some of their benefits.

But when the unions rejected the offers, negotiations disintegrated, employees said. Over the summer, employees said the paper’s actions and the armed guards all seemed to be trying to provoke a strike. When the incident occurred last Thursday, management did not hesitate.

Now, much depends on such factors as whether the Teamsters will continue to cross picket lines to deliver ink and paper to the News. In interviews Monday, several union leaders refused to answer that question.

There is also evidence that at least one of the unions--the Newspaper Guild, which represents editorial employees--is having trouble holding ranks. Several reporters in interviews Monday said they wanted to cross the picket lines but did not want to do so alone.

“There is a lot of ill feeling toward the union and a lot of ill feeling toward the paper,” said one reporter who didn’t want her name used.

On Sunday, Guild President Barry Lipton told dozens of reporters on the verge of crossing that two major advertisers were about to withdraw their advertising. And Monday, the unions called for a boycott of “anyone and everyone” who advertised in the News.

But later, one of the paper’s two largest advertisers, Alexander’s department stores, said it “expects to advertise in the Daily News as long as it prints,” according to Patrick Raccioppi, the chain’s advertising director.

Another question is how far Brumback and Tribune Co. are willing to go to support the News. At a meeting of Wall Street analysts last spring, Brumback gave at least some the impression that he seems to have little direct interest in the New York market. When asked which boroughs he saw as the base of the News’ support, he was unable to name them.

Over the course of the summer, the directors of advertising, finance, circulation and security were all replaced at the Daily News by executives from Chicago, raising questions about whether Hoge is still in full charge.