N.Y. Papers and Union Accept Basic Principles

NEW YORK--The New York Times and the New York Daily News have reportedly agreed in principle with their pressmen's union on the way to settle the union's 65-day-old strike.

It is unclear how soon the managements and union might agree on a contract, or when the two newspapers might settle with other striking unions and resume publication.

Theodore Kheel, lawyer for over 10,000 newspaper workers, announced the tentative agreement on principles yesterday after secret meetings with Times and News officials and leaders of the pressmen's union.

Walter E. Mattson, executive vice president of the Times, said the principles agreed to provide job guarantees for all "regular" pressmen and give the publishers the right to reduce their work force by attrition over a six-year period.

William J. Kennedy, president of the striking pressmen's union, said the principles of agreement preserve the "unit manning concept," under which the publishers agree to employ a certain number of pressmen for each press unit.

"I don't anticipate that after a pressmen's agreement is reached, a resumption of publication will be long off," Kheel said yesterday.

As described by Mattson and Kennedy, the principles of agreement mean the union appeared to have won its fight to keep the jobs of its members, and the publishers have apparently won the right to reduce work forces by not replacing employees who die, retire, or are fired.

The New York Post, which resumed publication a week ago, would be affected by any agreement the Times and News reach under a "me too" agreement to match whatever the two morning papers settle for.

The pressmen went on strike after publishers of the three dailies posted new work rules which would have eliminated the jobs of nearly half of the 1550 pressmen at the three papers. The publishers insisted they needed relief from restrictive work rules and expensive manning requirements in order to meet competition from aggressive suburban papers.