Emotional Issue Unresolved in N.Y. News Case : Labor: The public policy question of hiring replacement workers during a strike is left open.

The settlement of the New York Daily News strike, with British publisher Robert Maxwell’s agreement to buy the storied newspaper, leaves unanswered the emotional public policy question that triggered the strike in the first place:

What should be done about the practice of hiring permanent replacement workers during strikes?

The strike--one of the ugliest, hardest-fought American labor battles in years--illustrated that U.S. labor laws leave collective bargaining a naked, bare-knuckles game. Whoever has the power can set the rules.

In 17% of the strikes in the United States between 1985 and 1989, management permanently replaced strikers with new, non-union hires. That power--rooted in a 1938 Supreme Court decision but used sparingly until the 1980s--has made unions far more conservative about striking, thereby weakening their leverage in negotiations.

Unions say the practice has given management the upper hand. Management says it has promoted labor peace. The Bush Administration likes the status quo. President Bush’s new labor secretary, Lynn Martin, last week said Bush would veto an AFL-CIO-sponsored bill that would ban the hiring of permanent replacements.

Either way, the fear of being permanently replaced was the reason why the Daily News’ unions refused to go on strike for months after contracts for 2,300 workers expired in March, 1990.

For years, management and labor had resisted the full-fledged compromises needed to save the paper. Accusations of betrayal, bad faith and featherbedding--many of them accurate--stacked up like cordwood.

So management said 1990 would see the mother of all labor wars. It demanded a “management rights” clause, a contract term that essentially would cut labor out of decisions on how many of the paper’s jobs could be eliminated--and, not incidentally, a clause it knew the unions would never accept.

Management then set out to recruit and train permanent replacements for the paper’s journalists, press operators and truck drivers. The replacements were hired and housed near the News’ New York-area offices so that they could begin work as soon as a strike began.

Trouble was, the unions anticipated this scenario. They’d seen it played out at Eastern Airlines in 1989 and the Greyhound bus line in 1990.

In both those instances, management bargained rigidly, unions struck and management hired permanent replacements to create the non-union work forces they’d wanted all along. That left the strikers holding picket signs and pressing unfair-labor-practice charges that take years of administrative hearings to prove.

So until last October, the Daily News’ unions worked without a contract. Then one of the unions walked out over a minor dispute involving a single worker. Management sent replacements in--and immediately, in rage at the tactic, eight of the other nine unions went on strike, too.

“I think this is one in a long series of very difficult confrontations that we’re going to continue to see in unionized companies until the issue of permanent replacement workers is resolved,” said Joseph Blasi, a Rutgers University professor who specializes in studying labor unions.

“Labor-management law was originally set up to encourage both sides to come to a settlement. Using permanent replacement workers basically says that it’s OK for one side to eliminate the need for the other side,” said Blasi, who wrote a Labor Department study on Eastern Airlines’ troubled labor relations.

“There are very few unions that will use the strike weapon beyond the pressure stage into the destruction stage, if they have good intelligence about what is happening to a company,” he added. “In this situation, (management’s) use of replacement workers forced the use of the strike to become a suicidal weapon.”

In other words, once strikers have been permanently replaced, the union’s only power tactic is to try to economically destroy the company, pressuring management into selling the company to a more willing negotiator--in this case, Maxwell.

That’s what unions tried to do at Eastern, and the airline died. That’s what unions tried to do at Greyhound, and the bus company is now in bankruptcy court.

Organized labor took great pride Tuesday in the fact that its unions had held out almost five months without significant defections across the picket lines. It took great pride that the unions could outlast the Daily News’ owner, the Tribune Co. of Chicago, until the paper had been sold in principle.

It took great pride, too, when the last of nine striking unions approved a concessionary deal with Maxwell, a deal that eliminates 800 of the paper’s 2,300 jobs in order to keep the Daily News alive. And it took great pride that the 800 or so replacement workers hired by the Daily News will be let go.

But this was the ashes-in-the-mouth pride of a Pyrrhic victory. Anyone who celebrates is a fool, Blasi said.

“In this case you’ve had the worst of both sides beating each other over the head,” he said. “This is shameful as an example of how labor and management conduct themselves. Labor stuck its head in the ground until the last minute, and management simply tried to eliminate labor as a bargaining partner.

“It’s a testament to stubbornness, ego and self-destruction in our labor-managment system.”

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Daily News Chronology Daily News October, 1986-Unions are asked for $30 million in concessions; later accuse News of reneging on promise to modernize plant and equipment in return. January, 1990-News proposes replacing company truck drivers with private individual distributors. Febuary, 1990-Drivers stage slowdown at Garden City plant. News recuits security guardsfor Brooklyn plant and begins hiring non-union workers as standbys in case of strike. March, 1990-Contracts expire, with labor leaders asserting that they will not strike and accusing management of preparing to try to break the unions and sell the paper. News management says the paper has lost $115 million since 1980. May, 1990-News lays off 17 of 49 machinists. Oct. 25, 1990-A dispute over whether a disabled worker can do his job sitting down blossoms into a strike. The News publishes a limited Oct. 26 edition. Nov. 9, 1990-The News hires the homeless to hawk the paper after the city’s newsstands stop carrying it, contributing to a more than 50% circulation drop. Execuetives charge that a pattern of union violence is behind the vendor’s boycott. Nov. 23, 1990-Pressured by unions, major advertisers, including Macy’s, Alexander’s and A&S;,begin pulling out. Jan. 16, 1991-Publisher James Hoge announces the paper will be sold or shut down “in 60 daysor thereabouts” if he can’t reach agreement with unions. March 12, 1991-British press lord Robert Maxwell comes to terms with striking unions, setting up the purchase of the paper from Tribune Co.