Deadlock

After only one day in New York, U.S. Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz gloomily concluded that he could do nothing about settling the city's newspaper strike (TIME. Dec. 14). The publishers and the striking printers, said he. were still "very far apart''; the nation's mightiest metropolitan press would probably stay out of action for "days or weeks." The forecast seemed inevitable. Even before Wirtz arrived, the strike had degenerated into a deadlock of stubborn wills.

On one side of the argument stood Bertram A. Powers, 40, president of New York Local No. 6 of the International Typographical Union. In 65 years the Big Six--as Powers' local boastfully calls itself--has never before led a New York strike. But last Dec. 8. without even bothering to notify the other six printing craft unions. Powers pulled his men off the morning Times and the News, the evening World-Telegram and the Journal-American--the four Manhattan dailies that he deemed sufficiently prosperous to endure a lengthy siege.

On the other side of the scrap stood the Publishers Association of New York, a management team organized in iSg; for the express purpose of presenting labor with a united front. From experience, most recently the 1958 walkout of deliverymen that gagged New York's press for 19 days, the association has evolved a simple strategy: to close all member papers as soon as one is struck. Thus, when the I.T.U. picketed four papers, the publishers promptly closed five more: the Herald Tribune, the Mirror and the Post in Manhattan, and Samuel Newhouse's two Long Island dailies, the Press and Star-Journal, which also circulate in New York City.*

Potential Fatalities. Both sides have settled down to stubborn warfare that could, if sustained, kill off as many as three Manhattan dailies. One candidate for extinction is Dorothy Schiff's Post, a liberal afternoon tabloid with a tenuous lease on life. The Post, which has been replenished with periodic and generous transfusions from Dolly Schiff's personal fortune (she inherited $9 million), has served notice on the I.T.U. that it can survive neither a protracted strike nor a punitive contract. "I'm in a terrible position," said Mrs. Schiff last week. ''If I show too much weakness, then the advertisers won't come back. They'll figure we won't make it. It's considered rather miraculous that we've survived under this management for 23 years."

Another potential fatality is Hearst's tabloid morning Mirror, which, despite the second highest daily circulation in the U.S. (851,928), is famishing for want of advertising income. The strike presents Hearst with a convenient excuse for folding the Mirror into its New York afternoon paper, the Journal-American.

Beyond these two possible casualties lies still another: the morning Herald Tribune. Over the last year the Trib has gained 40.000 in daily circulation, bringing it to more than 400,000, but it is still a long way from solvency. "We can afford a protracted strike," said Walter N. Thayer, Trib president and business partner of Publisher John Hay Whitney. "Whether we can afford the contract ultimately agreed upon is another question." Any substantial increase in labor costs, Thayer predicted, might force all four morning papers to raise their issue price from a nickel to a dime. That was partly wishful thinking. The Tribune has longed for years to go to a dime; it has been prevented from taking the move by the New York Times's deliberate insistence on staying at a nickel--even at the cost of cutting down its own thin margin of profit.

Pacesetter. The prospect of such fatalities weighs lightly on the conscience of Bert Powers. If both the Mirror and the Post fold, his union will lose only 500 jobs out of a total New York membership of 8,200. Powers seems unconcerned for the reporters and other personnel who might wind up among the unemployed. The I.T.U. is also financially ready for trouble. With a strike fund of $1,200,000, together with $500,000 from international headquarters, Big Six is amply provisioned to maintain a picket line for months.

What sparked the New York shutdown was not so much the customary haggle over pay scales as Bert Powers' ambition to lead the I.T.U. back to organized glory. Moreover, a show of strength in New York, where the printers muster a membership so sizable that no international president can be elected without it, would add luster to Powers' image. But even this possibility runs a poor second to Powers' hopes of restoring the I.T.U.'s lost reputation as the pacesetting union in the nation's press.

The I.T.U. lost that distinction with the formation of the Newspaper Guild in 1933. The infant Guild was soon striking all over the journalistic scene. Tacitly condoned by publishers, the tradition was established that any negotiated Guild contract generally set the style for other unions. Bert Powers this year is trying to break with tradition. "We have had no basic working condition changes in 15 years," says he. "Management settles with the weakest union and makes that a pat tern. Well, I'm not about to accept a contract achieved by any other union."

Last month, as New York publishers ended a short-lived Guild strike at the Daily News by offering $8 more a week over two years, Powers served notice that he would settle for nothing similar. He asked for $18.45 more a week--to bring base pay to $159.45--along with collateral demands that included preserving the printers' hoary privilege of featherbedding at the publishers' expense.

Rising Tide. The news blackout did not affect syndicated columnists working out of New York, except to cost them their Manhattan outlets. The same held true for New York newspaper news services; their familiar bylines continued to appear out of town. Editions of New York pa pers published beyond New York, such as the Times's West Coast edition, came out as usual. But all this was small comfort to the home-bound New Yorker, who limped along as best he could on substitutes. To see how he was faring, Columbia University's School of Journalism conducted a street survey, discov ered he missed the weather forecast, TV listings, movie and theater listings, the stock tables, schedules of athletic events, and the news--in just about that order.

A rising tide of out-of-town papers poured into the city. Some of the better afternoon imports--Philadelphia's Bulletin, for example-- could only remind New-Yorkers of how sorely they needed a good afternoon paper of their own. Most of the morning imports were ordinary enough to revive memories of the quality of some of Manhattan's own morning press.

The Brooklyn Eagle, reborn in October after a fatal Guild strike in 1955, jumped from 50,000 circulation to 325,000. The National Enquirer, a New York-based tabloid devoted to gossip and cheesecake, boosted its New York press run of 300,000 by one million. On commuter coach seats, the railroads laid daily news bulletins; the New Haven's throwaway prayerfully asked its passengers not to drop them on the floor. With what it called "characteristic spontaneity," Harvard's student newspaper, the Crimson, inundated Manhattan with 10,000 free copies of a "New York Edition"--2,000 more than the Crimson freshet exported from Cambridge during the 1958 strike.

Shattered. How long New York's news drought would endure depended on the staying powers of the opposing sides. At the Journal-American, Publisher J. Kingsbury Smith was desperate to toss in the towel. "I am proposing here and now," he said, "that President Kennedy or Governor Rockefeller, or New York's Mayor Wagner, or all three, issue a public appeal to the striking workers to agree to a 60-day truce in the strike." Except for this querulous broadside, both sides seemed grimly set on a showdown. "I think it only fair to state." said Amory Bradford. New York Times vice president and the Publishers Association's chief negotiator, "that the reputations of the I.T.U. and Local 6 for fair dealing have been shattered. We await any move you desire to make." Retorted the I.T.U.'s Bert Powers: "We are prepared to hold out indefinitely."

Cleveland entered its third week without newspapers--even though Jimmy Hoffa's Teamsters, who led the walkout Nov. 29, have now negotiated a settlement with both the morning Plain Dealer and the evening Press. Irate at this early surrender, the American Newspaper Guild voted overwhelmingly to continue the strike on its own. replaced the departing Teamster picketers with Guildsmen.

* As a concession to Newhouse, the Long Island Press was permitted to go on printing in outlying Suffolk and Nassau counties. Unaffected by the strike: the Wall Street Journal, which regards itself as a national paper, and is not a member of the Publishers Association.

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