It's Baack! p. 12

By: George Garneau

It's Baack! p. 12

Unsinkable N.Y. Post survives another near-death experience
as Murdoch buys the paper; Newspaper Guild unit isn't as lucky
WHEN THE LABOR strife abated at the New York Post last week, another troubled New York tabloid had a new lease on life ? and another Newspaper Guild unit was broken.
And Rupert Murdoch, by demonstrating that he would let the Post die rather than give in to the Guild, added another union scalp to his belt.
Closed three days when the Guild walked out ? nine production unions struck in sympathy and Murdoch shut the doors, New York's feistiest tabloid snapped back to life Oct. 1, when unions representing 400 production workers crossed picket lines to bring the Post back from yet another vigil on death's doorstep.
The production unions, which earlier agreed to contracts designed to save the paper $6.2 million a year, broke ranks with the Guild reluctantly and in the belief that it was the only way to save their jobs.
"We're going in. Not that we want to. We have to," drivers union president Frank Sparacino said as members massed to surge past Guild pickets into the Post's loading docks and break the strike after three missed editions.
The Guild struck over Murdoch's demand for the right to fire workers at will for four months and his refusal to assume severance obligations from previous contracts worth millions of dollars.
The Post rejoins its tabloid competitors, the Daily News and New York Newsday, on life support ? all are losing money.
The day that the Post returned, a subsidiary of Murdoch's Australia-based media conglomerate, News Corp., completed its $25 million acquisition of the Post in bankruptcy court.
Because he bought only assets, Murdoch has no obligation to accept contracts or employees.
Murdoch, who sold the Post in 1985 to real estate investor Peter Kalikow to comply with a Federal Communications Commission rule prohibiting ownership of a newspaper and television station in the same market, bought the troubled tabloid from the court overseeing Kalikow's personal bankruptcy.
The paper has been losing about $15 million a year. Attempts to sell it earlier this year resulted in brief and chaotic stewardships by inexperienced publishers.
Congress relaxed the cross-ownership rule earlier this year to clear the way for Murdoch, who was viewed as the only hope to save the paper.
The strike collapsed on its fourth day when the Guild failed to dissuade or prevent craft union members from crossing picket lines. The union representing nearly 300 workers in news, advertising and business operations voted to end the strike and return to work.
But it wasn't that easy.
As managers and other union-exempt employees produced the paper, Guild employees lined up Oct. 4 to pick up applications for the jobs that they held until a week earlier. Some employees would apply for jobs that they held for decades.
Defeated union leaders collected the applications from Post executives to save defeated workers from humiliation.
Guild officials said they expected that about 200 members would lose their jobs. Post executives were not saying.
Archbishop John O'Connor of New York, at the request of the Guild, asked Murdoch to be fair in rehiring union members.
In a statement, Post publisher Pat-
rick J. Purcell said nobody would invest in a failing newspaper "without some review of the employees . . . who will make or break the newspaper."
He accused the Guild of failing to join in the "shared sacrifice" asked of management and other unions but said applications from Guild members would be reviewed "in complete fairness, with an eye toward building the most talented" work force possible. He refused further comment to protect the privacy of applicants.
Murdoch had offered the Guild $1.5 million in severance in place of what the Guild estimated was $7 million owed under earlier contracts. Severance of two weeks pay per year of service was in fact the union's pension plan.
Purcell advised the Guild to try to collect pension money from Kalikow, who is "legally responsible for those payments."
"Guild lawyers should be in bankruptcy court fighting for that severance," Purcell said.
As creditors, who typically collect pennies on every dollar owed, the Guild would be in line with newsprint manufacturers and others who supplied the Post and Kalikow's other businesses.
The Post's Guild unit joins in defeat the Daily News' Guild unit, which similarly was isolated from production unions and broken when Mortimer Zuckerman acquired the paper from bankruptcy last year. Zuckerman fired nearly 200 Guild members; the unit remains without a contract.
The Guild will remain the official bargaining agent at the Post if at least half of the people rehired are union members. The Guild has vowed to seek a new contract, whether or not it is forced to seek a new election.
Besides Murdoch, the Guild aimed most of its bitterness at George McDonald, president of the mailers union and the umbrella group of newspaper production unions, the Allied Printing Trades Council. McDonald was instrumental in negotiating terms for the production unions to return to work.
"What kind of a union leader asks his members to cross a picket line?" said Harry Leykis, chairman of the Post's Guild unit. "Scab is too nice a word for him. He's a worm."
Barry Lipton, president of Local 3 of the Newspaper Guild, said the Post's Guild workers, who suffered two pay cuts and a seven-year pay freeze to keep the paper alive, bore "an extraordinary amount of bitterness" toward Murdoch and his managers. Trying "to annihilate" their union was "inexcusable," he said, adding that McDonald "worked with Murdoch to break the Guild."
McDonald said, "I feel at least satisfied that all the employees still have an opportunity for work at the New York Post."
Had the paper remained closed, all Post workers would have been left jobless, he said.
In an editorial, the Post declared its roller-coaster ride over.
Setting itself apart editorially and taking a shot at competitors, it promised to be "an alternative voice that won't be drowned out by the high-decibel political correctness chorus dominant in local public discourse."
The editorial thanked New York Gov. Mario Cuomo for his help in saving the paper as well as leaders of its production unions, bankruptcy judges and police who protected the paper during the strike.
"But, in the end, we're glad to say simply that we're back ? this time to stay."
The new Post lists Murdoch, News Corp. chairman, as editor in chief and Ken Chandler as editor.
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