Survival Story

Unions help save the Bulletin

WE'RE HERE . . . AND IT FEELS GREAT!

Last week's headline in the Philadelphia Bulletin carried a double meaning: it was jubilant--and it was printed in red ink.

The paper's eight unions had been faced with the choice of accepting $5 million a year in cutbacks or facing a shutdown of the paper, which has lost $31.2 million since 1979--a third of it this year. Said Don Salvucci, chief negotiator for the pressmen's union, it was a question of "letting the ship sink or putting some people in a lifeboat." To keep the Bulletin afloat, 113 union and 73 nonunion jobs were eliminated. The 1,900 full-time employees remaining on staff are making various sacrifices, depending upon their position. Pressmen, for the most part, will no longer receive bonus pay for overtime hours. Paper handlers and composing-room workers have accepted a 10% cut in salary.

Salvucci's union suffered the heaviest job losses and was the last to sign the agreement. Its members were persuaded in part by the magnanimous example of Shop Steward Jim Healy, 30, a Bulletin pressman for 13 years. In a brief, impassioned plea, Healy urged the membership to ratify the agreement, though it meant his own dismissal. The pressmen had been especially reluctant to sign because their contract, unlike those of the other unions, contains a "uniformity clause" that could allow concessions granted to the Bulletin to be extended to Philadelphia's Inquirer and Daily News. It is a "complex quagmire," grumbled Sam McKeel, president of Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., owner of the News and the Inquirer. Until it is deciphered, "we won't know whether we want to move on it."

Publisher N.S. ("Buddy") Hayden, refusing to be discouraged by the demise of two other afternoon dailies, the Washington Star and the Tonight edition of New York's Daily News, predicts that his paper will turn a profit by 1984. "Philadelphia is big enough and vibrant enough to support two viable metropolitan newspapers," he says. The Charter Co., the oil, insurance and publishing conglomerate that owns the Bulletin, plans to pump in up to $30 million over the next four years. Meanwhile, Philadelphia Phillies Batting Star Pete Rose is doing some pitching for the Bulletin in radio spots. "I don't care whether you are a newspaper or a ballplayer," says Rose, "if you give 100%, if you bust your gut every day, you're gonna come out ahead." For the Bulletin, though, it is going to be one tough game.

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