No Common Ground

The antagonists in New York's newspaper strike resumed their places across the bargaining table last week, but about all that was traded was hostile words. "They are not going to put out a paper until they start to negotiate, and they haven't started," said Bertram A. Powers, president of New York Local 6 of the International Typographical Union, which by striking four papers Dec. 7 shut down all nine New York City dailies. Said Amory Bradford, chief spokesman for the Publishers Association of New York: "Their list of demands is totally unacceptable. We are within a very short step of our absolute limit"

Separate Pleas. By any measure, the strike's burden seemed larger than any of the principals, or even the innocent bystanders, could long accept. "We Miss You Too," said the World-Telegram, in a despondent ad posted all over New York's subway system. Broadway languished, as thousands of would-be theatergoers passed up a play or a movie because they had no simple way of discovering what was on. Christmas crowds still teemed through the city, their bullish mood hardly dampened for lack of those invaluable stimulants, the display ads. New York City's department stores reported that their volume was down by only one percent.

On the city's mute newspapers, 17,000 men, of a total work force of 20,000, were idle--and each week more than $3,000,000 in wages went down the drain. The papers themselves lost millions in ad and circulation revenues, took what comfort they could from strike-enforced economies. Merely by not publishing, for example, the nine dailies saved $300,000 a day in newsprint alone.

Dead Horse. But such practical considerations inspired neither side to move toward a settlement. Both seemed more concerned with pleading their separate causes. The publishers' position was that their last offer of $9.20 more a week --$4.25 the first year, $3.75 the second, plus $1.20 to defray the cost of an additional fourth week of paid vacation after 15 years--was already more than the papers could afford. Over two years, the boost would add some $10 million to the payrolls of the nine dailies--an increase that does not include the $8.50 package for which the Newspaper Guild settled in November. The cost must be met by papers that, lumped together, operate at a loss.

The printers stoutly defended every penny of their demands--which added up to $38.32 more a week, spread over the next two years. But as broken down by management, the I.T.U. package suggested exorbitance. Among other things, Bert Powers' printers are asking $3.25 per week in extra pension and welfare contributions, $19 more in pay for a shorter week. The union has also flatly refused to yield its time-dishonored right to set bogus type, a featherbedding practice that involves hand-composing, and then throwing away unused, all advertisements received in mat form. With appropriate contempt, the publishers call this makework "dead horse." The I.T.U. has also rejected a publishers' request to compose stock tables automatically from perforated tape, at a substantial saving in labor cost.

Stalemate. At week's end, even the pro forma meetings across the conference table broke off once more. Federal Mediator Stephen I. Schlossberg taxed both sides with failure "to bargain seriously," threatened to maintain the recess "until the parties are ready to make some progress." New York's Mayor Robert Wagner absolved himself of an active mediator's role in a shutdown that has affected the very pulse of his city. New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller promised to step in if the need arose, but felt that with a federal mediator on the scene his intervention now would only "complicate the situation." U.S. Secretary of Labor W.

Willard Wirtz, who fortnight ago spent a day in Manhattan vainly trying to bring both sides together, visited town again--but principally to clue himself on an incipient New York maritime strike. Going into its third week, Manhattan's newspaper strike was no nearer settlement than when it began.

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