Job cuts at N.Y. Times p.

By: George Garneau

NEW YORK TIMES Co. said it will take a fourth-quarter charge of $30 million, or 19? a share after taxes, to pay for white-collar staff cuts at its flagship New York Times.
The paper said it was too soon to say how many employees would be affected, but reductions would cut across nonproduction departments and would include managers and members of the Newspaper Guild local, which represents 1,600 employees.
Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. in a memo to employees said he hoped voluntary buyouts would suffice but did not rule out layoffs. He said the paper's 1993 ad volume was down more than 33% from 1987 and there was "little to suggest that much of this linage will return."
One estimate put the cuts at 150 to 300 jobs. Sulzberger suggested that white-collar staff cuts would total 10%, equivalent to the reduction in total work force since 1986, with most of those cuts in production.
The announcement came as the company was stiffening its demands to the Guild, which has failed to win a contract since the last one expired in March. The Guild is the paper's biggest union and the only one without a contract.
Barry Lipton, president of the local, said the Times in December proposed scrapping the Guild's long-standing job security provisions and broke off talks when the union refused.
"They want to have the right to lay off with no rights to seniority," he said.
Meanwhile, the paper's production unions have long-term contracts that save management millions of dollars a year by allowing lower staffing and more flexible work rules.
At the same time, the New York Post and New York Daily News have routed their Guild units in the process of emerging from bankruptcy.
Because of management victories at the Post and Daily News, "the publisher of the Times was tempted to become aggressive, and as a result, they are attempting to overreach," Lipton said.
He said the announcement of job cuts was calculated to pressure the Guild but actually has "galvanized" members by starkly reminding them how critical job security provisions are.
Management's demands include eliminating job security for workers whose duties are subcontracted or made obsolete by technology and scrapping protection from economic layoffs after 10 years of service.
"What they are proposing now is completely out of character and in fact changes the culture at the Times," Lipton said.
Sulzberger, whose memo assured that reductions would be "in line with our values," said that despite facing new competition and new technology, "we still operate under rules that have their origins in the 1920s and 1930s." The Guild contract, he said, "forces us to deal with staff reductions without regard to the skills and abilities we need."
Sulzberger called on the Guild to follow the example of the craft unions and "adapt to new business realities."
He said management needs "flexibility" to deal with the shifting job functions involved in pagination.
Lipton professed that the union is flexible ? but not so flexible that it will accept terms allowing management to send 30-year veterans packing.