Home Stretch p.

By: George Garneau

Zuckerman set to close deal to acquire New York Daily News
despite the lack of contact with the Newspaper Guild sp.

PUBLISHER AND REAL estate investor Mortimer Zuckerman was preparing to close his purchase of the bankrupt New York Daily News late in the week of Jan. 3-9 despite the lack of a contract with the paper's biggest union, the Newspaper Guild.
The printers union became the ninth of the paper's 10 unions to come to terms with Zuckerman. Only the Guild, representing 540 newsroom, classified and clerical workers, remains without a contract.
Zuckerman, who also owns U.S. News & World Report and The Atlantic, said he will negotiate with the Guild after he takes over the paper and will employ only selected Guild-represented workers.
"In essence they are busting us," said Guild secretary-treasurer Tom Pennacchio. "We are not going to roll over and die."
The Guild voted Jan. 6 to organize a boycott of the paper and of Zuckerman's other businesses if he carries out plans to purge Guild workers.
Zuckerman has asked all Guild-represented employees to apply for their jobs. He was considering which Guild workers to retain and planning to hire new ones.
In a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board, the Guild has accused Zuckerman of unfair labor practices over the re-application scheme.
Despite three months of negotiations, the Guild and Zuckerman have deadlocked over the publisher's plans for overhauling the newsroom. The Guild argues that his demands to expand management's hiring and firing rights, ending traditional union job security, amount to an attack on the union. Zuckerman says he needs the leeway so he can improve the news product.
The sides have not negotiated in about a month, and no talks were scheduled the week the deal was expected to close.
In an effort to entice Guild members to resign, Zuckerman has sweetened the contractual two weeks' severance per year of seniority with an extra half a week.
The contract with the printers union, New York Typographical Union Local 6, came after an appeals court allowed Zuckerman to ignore lifetime job guarantees for 167 printers. He had promised to walk away from the paper if forced to honor the 1974 guarantees, which he said cost $10 million a year.
The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals on Dec. 22 upheld a bankruptcy court ruling, which had been overturned by a U.S. District Court, and drove the two sides back to the bargaining table.
The three-judge appeals panel agreed with Bankruptcy Judge Tina Brozman that 167 obsolete printers, whose predecessors set hot-lead type, should not jeopardize 1,850 Daily News jobs.
The printers agreement nearly halves union staffing to about 80. The contract, through the year 2005, reduces the number of shifts a week to 400 from 770, and calls for a 3% pay increase after two years.
"Under the circumstances it was about the best deal we could come up with," said printers union president James Grottola. "It was not negotiated. It was imposed by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals."
Grottola said the contract will save the paper over $4.5 million a year. The agreement also includes incentives for early retirement for 50 printers and $60,000 buyout offers for those remaining.
If the Daily News changes hands as planned, the deal will end yet another tumultuous episode in three years of teetering on the brink of oblivion. The troubled tabloid spent most of 1992 seeking a white knight to rescue it from bankruptcy court and begin rebuilding.
It began in 1990 when the Tribune Co. confronted the unions and demanded huge concessions to reverse years of red ink. A bitter, violent strike lasted five months and ended when the Tribune Co. paid British publisher Robert Maxwell to take the hobbled paper in March 1991.
When it was over, circulation had fallen to about 800,000, from nearly 1.3 million in 1988. But Maxwell died mysteriously eight months later, leaving over $1 billion missing from his British pension funds and his media empire drowning in debt. The News soon entered bankruptcy amid allegations that Maxwell had used it to siphon money from pension funds.
During a year of courting unions, Zuckerman edged out Conrad Black, chairman of the Canadian-based newspaper company Hollinger Inc.
"I think we are in the home stretch," said Daily News editor and publisher Jim Willse.
Willse said the paper was profitable in the fourth quarter of 1992, more so than expected. He was unable to quantify the loss for the year, but a union source pegged it at $7 million.
A closing scheduled for before Christmas was pushed back by appeals and the holiday season.