The Siege of Washington

Chartered helicopters still waited to carry copy to distant printing plants, but those $108-an-hour air taxis were being kept only for emergencies. For the first time since the Washington Post's pressmen went on strike and sabotaged nine presses early this month (TIME, Oct. 13), the paper was able to turn out a full 550,000-copy edition in its own plant last week. The pressmen's walkout has been joined by three other Post unions, but the nation's eighth largest morning paper seemed to be adjusting to the siege remarkably well.

It now is clear that the paper had long been making preparations for a confrontation. Rising labor costs have helped reduce the paper's share of profits for the Washington Post Co. from 64% in 1970 to 38% in 1974.*Publisher Katharine Graham last year assigned her vice president for finance, Mark Meagher, as general manager of the newspaper, instructing him to restore its sagging fortunes. Says she: "I want to win a Pulitzer Prize for management."

Meagher and Lawrence Wallace, a tough labor negotiator hired from the Knight chain, have concentrated their efforts on the Post's labor costs, which are scheduled to rise by $5 million this year alone. Despite union opposition to labor-saving machinery, the paper bought new photographic composition equipment and began installing it in administrative offices two floors above the pressroom. It also started training about 125 employees to produce the paper during a walkout. Much of that instruction was received at the Newspaper Production and Research Center, an impressively equipped printing school in Oklahoma City supported by the Post and 200 other papers and known among union members as a "school for scabs." Indeed, the center was organized largely by a newspaper production manager who had driven printing unions from the nearby Daily Oklahoman and Times (combined circ. 272,177) in the 1950s.

Doubled Salaries. The Post made certain its unions were aware of these precautions, and last year a union representing 700 typographical workers softened their opposition to automation, allowed the company to begin regular use of photographic composition equipment, and agreed to end some featherbedding practices. As for the pressmen, who were not a party to the agreement, the Post wanted to limit the overtime system that enabled some workmen to double their $15,000 base salaries; the pressmen resisted, their contract expired, and they walked out.

The Post does not seem anxious to have them back. Although the strike is costing the paper as much as $100,000 a day in lost advertising and extra logistical expenses, Meagher has been arguing for the company's "right to publish," and he plans to file a civil suit for damages against the employees who trashed the presses. Although the American Newspaper Guild is insisting that the editorial employees should join the other unions in supporting the strike, the Post unit of the Guild has voted 270 to 251 not to do so. A number of journalists say they will keep working even if that vote is later reversed.

One major irritation for Post executives is that lost advertising has been fattening the rival Star. The financially troubled Star can certainly use the extra revenue, but Graham and New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger have made personal appeals to Star Publisher Joe L. Allbritton to stand together against the unions. (In its own city, the Times announced that it would close in sympathy if its prime competitor, the News, is hit this week by a strike of deliverers, and the News said it would shut down if Times' deliverers struck first.)

The Post was publishing only 48-page editions last week, about half its prestrike size. Reporters found that they had to write their stories shorter, to fit the reduced news hole, and earlier, to meet abbreviated deadlines. "Son of a bitch, I wish this weren't going on," complained harried Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee. Yet nonunion workers were using the new composition equipment to produce a fairly creditable facsimile of the prestrike Post, and some of Bradlee's colleagues were less troubled by the siege. Remarked Meagher as two female secretaries tended one of the paper's giant presses: "They get a hell of a bang out of making those big machines go."

*Earnings for the parent company, which also owns Newsweek, six broadcasting stations and a paper mill, dropped to $5.4 million in this year's first half, from $7 million in the same period last year, while revenues rose to $ 152 million from $ 134 million last year.

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