THE TIMES AND NEWS RESUME PUBLICATION

The New York Times and The Daily News resumed publication today after the resolution of a pressmen's strike and other labor disputes that had shut down operations at the two newspapers for 88 days and had prevented The New York Post from publishing for 56 days.

The windup was complicated during a hectic weekend of negotiations when the Times unit of the Newspaper Guild of New York, representing news and business employees at the newspaper, suddenly put up picket lines as its bargaining talks dragged on Saturday night.

With other unions pressuring for a return to work, the guild agreed yesterday to remove its picket lines at The Times and to hold a meeting to permit members to vote on the publisher's final proposal.

Early today, the guild members approved the pact, 226 to 121.

Pressmen Ratify Contract

Members of Printing Pressmen's Union No. 2, who walked out Aug. 9 after the publishers of the three newspapers unilaterally posted new work rules, formally ratified a new six‐year contract late yesterday that assures job security during that period for 1,508 regular pressmen, but that also allows management to reduce manning through attrition and to eliminate costly overtime. Management officers say they won most of their goals of cutting pressroom costs over the next SiX years, but concede that they had miscalculated how long and costly the shutdown would be. A two‐part history of the strike begins today on page 86,

Unions ratifying new agreements included the paperhandlers’ and the machinists’ at both newspapers and the truck mechanics’ at The News, all of whom had been on strike, and the stereotypers'. The deliverers’ union, a key group because of the indispensable role of its members in distributing newspapers, reached a new agreement with the publishers Of The Times and The News last Friday.

Employees of the newspapers streamed back into the offices of The Times on West 43d Street and of The News on East 42d Street when picket lines were lifted, and they began a race to meet deadlines and get out today's papers. The Post, whose publisher, K. Rupert Murdoch, withdrew from joint negotiations with the two other news--1.pers late in September, began to publish on Oct. 5, the 57th day of the strike, after agreeing to go along with any future settlement reached by the pressmen with The Times and The News.

The long strike officially ended at 3:34 P.M., when George E. McDonald, the president of the Allied Printing Trades Council and also of the mailers’ union, an. nounced that the ‘unions on strike, with the exception of the guild, had settled their disputes and that the papers would be able to publish today's editions.

“It looks like it's all over,” Mr. McDonald said at Automation House, on East 68th Street.

It. was Mr. McDonald who brought Theodore W. Kheel, the lawyer and mediator, into the dispute, originally as an adviser to the council of newspaper unions but increasingly as a mediator as the strike continued. Both sides agreed that Mr. Kheel played a pivotal role in the latter weeks of the walkout in clarifying issues and bringing about an agreement in the pressmen's dispute and subsequently in the other negotiations.

At issue in the critical pressmen's strike were the publishers’ demands to eliminate workers they considered unnecessary and costly work practices that they had accepted over the years. But the unions said the publishers, “greedy for profits,” were trying to break the union as The Washington Post had done in 1975. The pressmen's settlement provides for the assignment of 11 journeyman pressmen to the operation of a six‐unit press, one man less than under the previous contract but three more than the publishers had originally sought. It continues the practice of assigning men to specific press units rather than the more flexible practice of room manning that the pubI ishers had sought.

The number of junior pressmen, or apprentices, also assigned to press opera. tions is to be submitted to a fact‐finder to determine what manning at The Times's plant on 43d Street would be required to make it comparable in junior pressmen manning to that of The Newark StarLedger. Before the strike The Times had to hire 68 men a shift; the final number will be between 18 and 38 juniors, or “flyboys.”

The publishers gained the right to reduce the guaranteed list of 1,508 pressmen only by attrition through death, retirement, resignation or discharge for ,cause. But they will have the unilateral right to offer voluntary termination incentives to speed up the attrition process. They also achieved gains, newspaper sources said; that will mean reductions in overtime and the manning for maintenance and cleanup operations.

Wages were never a major issue In the dispute, since a pattern for increases of $23 a week in the first year, $23 a week in the second and 322 a week in the third had been established in earlier negotiations between the publishers and the deliverers’ union. The pressmen's agreement also provides for a wage reopener at the end of the third year of the contract, on March 30, 1981. The basic weekly pay for pressmen working five shifts had been $361.41, but management sources said many pressmen made substantially more as a result of extra shifts and overtime.

William J. Kennedy Jr., the president of Printing Pressmen's Union No. 2, characterized the agreement as “just and equitable” but said that there were no winners in a strike of three months. He singled out the job guarantees and the preservation of the unit manning concept as key goals the union had achieved.

On the publishers side, Walter E. Mattson, vice president and general manager of The Times, said the publishers had wanted manning competitive with that of suburban newspapers and had succeeded in getting manning comparable to that at The Newark Star‐Ledger, subject to the fact‐finding relative to the number of junior pressmen. He also said the publishers had gained “a sensible maintenance and cleanup arrangement” through negotiations between production officials of the papers and the pressmen.

“We came out about where we hoped to but almost 90 days later,” Mr. Mattson said.

Ratification votes by the pressmen and three other craft unions were completed quickly yesterday afternoon. The pressmen's vote for approval of their agreement was 660 to 217. The stereotypers approved their agreement 256 to 44; the machinists, 143 to 3, and the paperhandlers by a unanimous vote. The truck mechanics at The News had ratified their agreement earlier, and the executive board of the deliverers had approved their pact.

Effects of the Strike

The greatest effect of the strike was, of course, on the newspapers themselves and the 11,000 employees who were on strike or off the newspaper payrolls if supporting the strikes of other unions. Unofficial estimates indicated that the combined losses in advertising and circulotion for the three papers might have been as much as $150 million, while wage losses for newspaper employees may have approached $00 million. Most of the employees, however, received union benefits and, atter the seventh week, up to $125 a week in unemployment benefits.

During the long strike, radio, television, local magazines and suburban newspapers experienced a boom in advertising, listeners and readership. The papers that were struck face possible long‐term damage• in the loss of readers and advertisers who may not return. Some of these losses could be to cost-efficient newspapers in the suburbs, such as Newsday on Long Island, The Newark Star‐Ledger, The Record in Hackensack, N.J., and eight Westchester County dailies published by the Gannett chain.

The strike also saw the emergence of four interim tabloids published in the city in an effort to cash in on advertising revenues and to fill the news void. Many bylines familiar to readers of the struck papers appeared in these papers — The City News, The New York Daily Press, The New York Daily Metro and The Graphic