November 18, 1983

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1983 The Economy The House voted down an attempt to bring an $8 billion tax bill to the floor, as lawmakers conceded that they would not adopt any deficit reduction measures before adjournment. (Page A1.) Housing starts fell 3.8 percent in October, depressed by a decline in new, single-family homes, the Commerce Department said. The modest October decline, after one of 12.2 percent in September, indicates housing starts have stabilized, officials said. (D1.)

Computers are transforming the telephone industry workplace into what some experts call the office of the future. The companies praise the changes, saying they improve customer service and increase productivity. But union officials and many workers say the changes are often detrimental to employees, fostering work speedups, extensive monitoring and loss of jobs. ''You've got to meet the bogey,'' said Ann Crump, a union official in Milwaukee, referring to the time limit, usually about 30 seconds, that telephone operators are allotted for each call. ''You can be as little as two seconds off and be unsatisfactory.''

Greyhound buses began rolling again yesterday, but they carried few passengers through cordons of strikers around the country. Pickets, upset by the company's decision to replace them, demonstrated at Greyhound terminals and taunted people who crossed their lines to buy tickets. In some places they surrounded buses, beat on the sides, bent rear-view mirrors and tried to stop buses from moving. Strikers clashed with police officers trying to preserve order and open the way for the buses. More than 100 arrests and half a dozen injuries were reported.

T is nearly four months since the South Street Seaport celebrated its renaissance with an opening as lavish as the debut of a world's fair. Many thousands have visited the Seaport every sunny day since, But will the throngs love the flavor that evokes the busy mercantile quarter of more than a century ago in November and December as they did in July and August? There are 5,000 or 6,000 who come to the Seaport each week to cast an affirmative vote. As the days grow shorter and colder, the Seaport has completed almost everything that it had planned in those early hectic days. The escalator to the second floor of the Fulton Market building is now running. And the second floor, which was then not ready, is now humming with dozens of food vendors. The lovely restaurant on the third floor is open. Stores that opened with empty shelves are now fully stocked. The multi-everything movie that was still being assembled is now overwhelming audiences with a high- decibel panoramic production. One may stroll through the Seaport blocks with one foot in the historic past and one foot in a commercial present, from tall ships tethered to East River piers at Fulton Street to boutiques selling tourist T-shirts. There is some uncertainty about how the Seaport will establish itself in the life of the city, how it will fit into a New York that has many competing attractions.

Excerpts from opinions, page B4. A Federal appeals court ruled yesterday that a magazine had not violated the copyright laws by printing information from a book of memoirs by former President Gerald R. Ford. The book's publishers sued the magazine, The Nation, for printing an article that used material from the book manuscript shortly before it was published in 1979. The ruling yesterday overturned a district court decision in favor of the book publishers, Harper & Row and the Reader's Digest Association.