Down And Dirty at the News

By John Greenwald

If Charlie is going to stick it to you, he'll punch you in the face, but he won't stab you in the back," says an admiring associate of Charles Brumback, chief executive of Chicago's Tribune Co. Either way, Brumback is a heavyweight champion of union busting. Five years ago, the Tribune declared war on its organized labor and, after a bitter strike, effectively broke it. Last week Brumback's company was locked in an even fiercer and more far-reaching strike by nine unions, which management had done its share to provoke, at the media giant's troubled New York Daily News.

For organized labor, the strike at the third largest U.S. metropolitan daily quickly became a cause celebre. More than 10,000 municipal workers and other sympathizers joined strikers in a rally outside News headquarters. Inside, the strikebound paper's editors were frantically offering jobs to reporters at other publications and trying to woo back wavering staffers to help put out the News. "My boss was on the phone again this afternoon pleading with me to come back," said a striking reporter. "It was an incredibly hard sell. He said, 'You still have your job, but we can't promise that for tomorrow.' "

The anxiety was as high-pitched as the blue-collar tabloid's front-page headlines. Not since Ronald Reagan fired striking air-traffic controllers in 1981, which put unions on the defensive for the rest of the decade, have the stakes seemed so high in a labor struggle. "This is happening in New York City, which traditionally has been a union stronghold," says Philip Mattera, author of Prosperity Lost, a study of worker setbacks in the 1980s. "If the unions can be broken in New York City, that's going to be felt throughout the country."

At issue is the company's determination to uproot work rules that, it argues, reflect generations of featherbedding that cost the News some $70 million a year in excessive wages and benefits. The newspaper says it loses $50 million annually. "These contracts are a nightmare," says News publisher James Hoge. "You can't manage effectively under them."

The strike flared from a minor dispute that swiftly escalated amid long- standing tensions between the News and its unions, which represent most of the paper's 2,700 employees. After a supervisor ordered a worker with a medical disability to stand up on the job last month, a group of union drivers walked out of the plant, providing an opportunity for management to replace them. The News, which last year began training nonunion replacement workers at sites in Florida and New Jersey, rushed a busload of substitute drivers to the scene. The next day the paper declared that 60 replaced drivers had lost their jobs. As word of the dismissals spread, the unions launched a general strike that seemed to play into management's strategy by enabling it to bring in more nonunion workers.

The dispute turned into an old-fashioned brawl. Strikers have hurled rocks and bottles at News delivery trucks and warned dealers against selling the paper. Distribution may be management's weakest point. While the News has been printing more than 1 million papers a day, strikers contend that only a few hundred thousand have been reaching newsstands. The paper even resorted to handing out 200,000 free copies a day on the street.

In the war for public opinion, the unions have some weak spots. The violence could reduce sympathy for the strike. And the contrast between the mostly white strikers and the many black and Hispanic replacement workers has enabled management to portray union members as privileged and entrenched. Moreover, at least 100 of the 750 employees who belong to the Newspaper Guild went back to their desks last week. Declared one returning worker: "Why should I, as a black woman who feels the need to be two to three times as good as a white counterpart just to get the same recognition, support some spoiled white brat who doesn't want to work?"

For its part, management hopes to wear down the strikers through a war of attrition that would force the unions to agree to new contracts on | management's tough terms -- or face a permanent lockout. The unions, on the other hand, hope they can cripple the News and force the Tribune Co. to sell the paper to a more compatible owner.

Management's hard-nosed strategy is vintage Brumback. While he earns an estimated $1.2 million a year, the flinty Brumback, 62, wears plain white shirts and dark gray suits and disdains any hint of waste or excess. He is so intent on repeating his Tribune victory in New York City that colleagues have begun calling the News strike "Charlie II."

But some experts doubt that Brumback will prevail. "Management has really overplayed its hand on this one," says Lawrence Mishel, research director of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. For one thing, the Tribune strike lacked the support of that paper's drivers, who readily crossed picket lines to preserve their lucrative contracts.

The outcome is likely to be decided in the struggle for the hearts of the striking editorial workers and in pitched battles to get the News to readers. If management prevails, the Tribune Co. will have provided a blueprint for breaking even the most powerful and established unions. But if union members hold out long enough to paralyze the paper, the company's pugilistic philosophy is likely to be spurned by other managers in favor of the more conciliatory style now espoused by the Detroit automakers. A clear victory by either side in the News battle is likely to help set the tone of labor relations in the 1990s.

With reporting by Christine Gorman/New York and William McWhirter/Chicago