PERSPECTIVE ON LABOR : A Fight to Salvage 2,800 Good Jobs : Can New York’s oldest tabloid survive a union-busting attempt by its owners? The Daily News publishes, barely.

Ten years ago, President Reagan signaled a new era in labor relations with the mass dismissal of air-traffic controllers. There followed a decade when unions either bowed to rollbacks or were crushed--in copper mines, packing plants, airlines. Taxes, inflation and layoffs helped to depress the standards of American labor. Now a test has begun here that may herald a turnabout--or the end of the New York Daily News, the granddaddy of tabloid journalism.

The death of a newspaper is not an uncommon thing. Manhattan had nine dailies in 1945; now there are four, and only one of them makes money. But the Daily News, with a pre-strike circulation of 1.1 million, is still a giant, and its fate is worthy of national attention.

The strike, or lockout, that began two weeks ago should have come as no surprise. The Tribune Co. of Chicago, owner of the Daily News, said last year it would have to chop its labor force and take total control of staffing if the paper was to survive.

The company then went into a strikebreaking mode, hiring a union-busting law firm and openly training managers and staffers from other newspapers to run all operations. When union contracts expired last May, management advertised for non-union replacements and began training many of them.

Uniformed guards patrolled the newsroom and production departments. Layoffs were arbitrarily imposed. Union officials told members not to respond, fearing that the company sought a strike as a pretext to cancel obligations for severance pay, pensions and health benefits, estimated at up to $150 million.

Finally, a row between a foreman and a worker set off a stoppage by a crew of mailers. They were quickly told they were fired and being permanently replaced by strikebreakers.

It was this death sentence that brought the reluctant unions into the street. New York has seen many strikes, some long and bitter, but no one could recall an oath by management never to rehire the strikers.

For the blue collars, there was no choice. The situation looked a bit different to the news staff and other white collars. Theirs were the only decent jobs readily available. The city is in recession, magazines are folding, the New York Post recently cut its payroll and paychecks by some 20%. The staff thought the Tribune Co. might be planning to close the Daily News for good.

Milling around on 42nd Street, some editorial staffers talked up reasons to go back: the strike was doomed; the unions, despite all the advance notice, had been caught without a battle plan, and some unions were shady outfits. More than 100 did go back in the first few days. A few soon quit, saying conditions were intolerable.

As planned, the presses rolled. It was not a good paper; most of the bylines were gone and the flavor, too; strikebreaking reporters didn’t know the town. But the paper was printed, still fat with ads. Management boasted a bigger circulation than normal, a claim quickly disproved. From the first, deliveries ran into resistance. Some trucks were burned, bundles were destroyed and thousands of dealers declined to sell the paper.

The publisher employed homeless men to give away papers on the street, and invited organizations of minority journalists to submit names of prospects for employment--pointedly noting the white cast of several striking unions. Members of the National Assn. of Black Journalists objected to being used as a strikebreaking force, after their executive board had nibbled at the bait.

Management’s complaint about featherbedding has a basis, but the unions have long offered to negotiate the issue. To date management has rebuffed mediation. Publisher James Hoge said Wednesday that union negotiators had offered only small concessions during the 10 months of negotiations that preceded the strike. But George McDonald, president of the Allied Printing Trades Council, said workers are ready to take the same pay cuts that employees at the Post accepted two months ago.

The mood on the picket line during the first days was one of despair. Now strikers think they can indefinitely block the newspaper’s circulation. Hoge acknowledged Wednesday that deliveries were being made to only about 2,000 of the paper’s more than 12,000 normal outlets, and that the paper was printing just 600,000 copies. Meanwhile, the rival Post and Times Mirror’s up-and-coming New York Newsday pick up readers.

Strikers are still unsure whether the Tribune Co. will finally kill the paper. It doesn’t have to--it could settle, seek a buyer or cut costs with a joint operating agreement with the Post, which is more than willing. But managements can be stubborn to the point of suicide--look at Eastern Airlines and Greyhound.

Whatever happens to the Daily News, workers everywhere have a stake in the outcome. Here are, or were, 2,800 good jobs. At best they will become fewer and not so good; at worst they will disappear. They are a conspicuous symbol of the millions of good jobs that have gone overseas, or been replaced by cheap non-union labor at home or been wiped out by company takeovers.