The Right to Manage

"I've worked in the mailroom, I've helped take classified ads, I've rolled a trash bin or two across the press room." That job history was recounted last week in the offices of the Washington Post, not by a trainee but by Katharine Graham, 58, board chairman of the Washington Post Co.

Publisher Graham has learned plenty about the mechanics of the newspaper business since Oct. 1, when some of the Post's 204 pressmen wrecked their presses and walked off the job, followed by members of seven other unions--but not the paper's 843-member Newspaper

Guild unit representing editorial and clerical employees. Working under siege conditions with members of all the commercial departments who are doing most of the production jobs, Graham has managed to keep the Post publishing, though at first in sharply reduced editions. "Putting our hands on our own machinery is something we never did before," says the trim, smartly dressed publisher. "I think we all have a better sense of what makes the place run well."

Most Powerful. She took over the paper (which her father had bought during the Depression) after the 1963 suicide of her husband Philip. Since then, she has become one of the most powerful women in America--and one of the best, toughest publishers in the field. Her Washington Post Co., which includes Newsweek, six broadcast stations and 49% of a Canadian paper mill, rang up revenues of $287 million last year.*

Nevertheless, she still devours books on business subjects and seeks the counsel of such friends as Los Angeles Times Publisher Otis Chandler and Clay Felker, editor of New York magazine. Says Felker: "The Gannett chain may make more money, but they don't have her concern for quality." Graham has maintained the quality by preserving generous editorial budgets, but she wants to raise the company's profit margin from last year's 9% to 15% by 1977.

Graham has a keen eye for picking talent and gives her editors much latitude. But she does not hesitate to shuffle executives abruptly. The newspaper division, for example, has had three different business managers in as many years. Her top corporate officer is President Larry H. Israel, 56, whom she hired from the presidency of the Group W stations. She has been stage-managing the paper's operations since the strike directly through the newspaper's general manager, Mark J. Meagher, 40. Coming up fast is Graham's son Donald, 30, who serves as Meagher's assistant and will almost certainly be publisher some day.

Special Dilemma. Graham rarely relaxes. Her legendary Georgetown parties are devoted to government and diplomatic figures, and even on her 250-acre estate on Martha's Vineyard, Washington never seems far away. Says she: "I want to win a Pulitzer Prize for management."

The strike is a special dilemma for her. Cheered by liberals for the Post's role in exposing Watergate, she is now being attacked by some liberals as a union buster. "The union is to be smashed," wrote Post Columnist Nicholas von Hoffman last week. "Graham has accepted the pressmen's union's invitation to waltz back to the industrial warfare of the 19th century."

Post Executive Editor Benjamin C. Bradlee violently disagrees with Von Hoffman. "We're not talking about cruel management or an exploited working class," he retorts. "We're talking about a bunch of criminals who slash tires and smash presses and hit women over the head with two-by-fours. I have no lint left in my navel for that." Graham makes the same point more moderately: "We are not union busting. That means an unwillingness to bargain, which just isn't the case here. They [the pressmen] wouldn't negotiate. They busted themselves."

In addition to the initial pressroom violence, the strike has been marked by beatings and threats to nonstrikers, and three shots were fired through the Post's office windows. Graham was burned in effigy at a union rally, and when she saw a photo of a placard reading PHIL

SHOT THE WRONG GRAHAM, she covered her face with her hands and said, "O God, not that."

The central issue in the strike is economic, not personal: the pressmen's wages cost the company $5 million a year, one-third of it in overtime according to the Post. In previous contracts, management had given the pressmen control over setting people's work schedules and determining the size of work crews. The union had used this control, charged the Post, to enable the average pressman to supplement his $14,000 basic wage with $8,000 in overtime per year. Complains Graham: "They frequently scheduled themselves to get as much overtime as possible--sometimes at the expense of getting the paper out on time."

Pressroom Control. In its proposals for a new contract this year, the Post offered the pressmen a 25% increase in the basic wage in three years and a $400,000 bonus, to be divided among them. In return, the paper asked to be given back control of the pressroom. The union has refused. Last week the Post began hiring 140 permanent replacements for the pressmen, while a dozen or so strikers have accepted the Post's offer to return to work "as individuals." Company executives believe some of the unions may return to work as early as next month. But James Dugan, president of the pressmen's union Local 6, was adamant. Said he: "We're willing to negotiate, but we're not willing to be raped."

Meanwhile, life inside the picket-surrounded Post building is becoming less hectic. The ninth-floor executive dining room is still serving as an all-night diner. Executives still have to pick their way through piles of dirty laundry to grab sleep, on cots set up in their offices, between an all-day shift behind the desk and an all-night shift putting out the paper. But only 100 employees are still living in the building, down from 200 at the beginning of the strike. All but one of the paper's nine presses have been repaired.

"It's been sort of like the Battle of Britain," Graham told TIME Correspondent Marguerite Michaels last week. "Everyone has risen to extraordinary heights. What we're trying to retrieve is the right to manage, which we ourselves have let erode. You can't have a fine editorial product if you can't be financially strong. Excellence and profitability go hand in hand."

*The Post last year accounted for 35% of the company's $287 million in revenues and 35% of its $28 million in profits. Newsweek and Newsweek Books accounted for 43% of revenues and 36% of profits, broadcast operations represented 13% of revenues and 26% of profits.

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