November 5, 1990

The drivers' union, locked in a crucial fight with The Daily News, has a history of strikes, slowdowns, violence and intimidation. In its battles for wages and job security for members who truck most of the region's newspapers and magazines, the union, critics say, may have helped kill some ailing newspapers. Defenders say it has changed with the times while bringing a decent life to thousands of working-class people.

The last Governor of New York to seek a third term got it, which is one of few similarities between this year's campaign and the one nearly a quarter century ago. Nelson A. Rockefeller's re-election in 1966 looked like the start of a political dynasty: his brother Winthrop won as Governor of Arkansas; West Virginia voters sent his nephew John D. Rockefeller 4th to that state's legislature.

THE ECONOMY The economic slump may be deeper and last longer than previous recessions, some economists and bankers warn. Banking and real estate troubles will work against a recovery. [ Page D1. ] Bond market analysts say the Fed must be aggressive in cutting short-term interest rates to help prevent what looks like a mild recession from turning into a steeper, prolonged downturn. [ D1. ] Accounting firms are hurting so much that they are offering bargains, thinning their ranks and searching for innovative ways to bring in revenue, like KPMG Peat Marwick's offer to rent out conference rooms in New York and Chicago. [ D1. ] Airports are planning to use a windfall from a new boarding fee to pay for expansion and modernization projects. [ A14. ] A new analysis from a research group financed by labor unions says the Federal deficit-cutting plan would cost the average family of four $321 a year in additional taxes. [ A18. ] THE MEDIA BUSINESS The television ratings race this year is the closest ever. The poor showings are strong evidence that the erosion of the networks' audience is continuing. At the same time, the industry has to contend with drastically weaker advertising. Television. [ D1. ] Daily News executives said the strike against the newspaper was precipitated by an internal dispute in the drivers' union. [ B4. ] The Deliverers Union is a tough, independent union. [ B1. ] Home-design magazines are betting that Americans will be staying home more and will be drawn to high-fashion decorating. But these publications may have to ride out a shakeout. [ D9. ] Several prominent jobs in book publishing have recently gone to foreign-born executives, like Harold Evans, a native of Britain who is the new president and publisher of Random House. [ D9. ] Some business publications are struggling. Last week, the owners of Business Month said the magazine would be closed, and Business Week announced that it would lay off 10 or its 250 staff members and close two news bureaus. [ D9. ] A Boston-based ad agency seems to have scored a rare success in establishing an office on Madison Avenue. Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos's New York branch now has billings of about $60 million. Kim Foltz: Advertising. [ D10. ] INTERNATIONAL A ban on American meat in Europe is complicating tense talks on farm trade. The European Community is being asked to dismantle its system for protecting local farmers. [ D1. ] U.S. law firms are hampered in their Moscow operations by the cumbersome, murky legal system in the Soviet Union. Even the move toward decentralization has complicated matters by creating a jumble of new laws and jurisdictional problems. [ D1. ] Australia is turning to its entrepreneurs for help in bailing out faltering state companies and banks. But the country's private enterprises are in a financial squeeze themselves. [ D8. ] A group of Soviet free-market economists warned that Mikhail S. Gorbachev's compromise economic program was pointing the country toward hyperinflation and economic paralysis. [ A8. ] COMPANIES Investors sued Laventhol & Horwath for $15 million, accusing the firm of failing to alert their partnership to potential problems in its purchase of the Arizona Biltmore hotel in 1984. [ D2. ] TODAY'S COLUMNS Chemical makers are watching their fear of oversupply come true. For three years, they have expanded operations, even though they worried that the new plants would produce more than anyone would want to buy. Louis Uchitelle: Business Scene. [ D2. ] Big oil's recent prosperity is likely to swell in the next few quarters unless there is war in the Middle East. Fighting would send crude prices above $60 a barrel but would hurt refining, marketing and petrochemical operations. Market Place. [ D6. ]

It was born as a union of horse-and-buggy newspaper deliverymen at the turn of the century, a stepchild of the fledgling labor movement and New York's yellow journalism wars. Its story is not a sentimental tract on human rights, but an often unsavory tale of rough, insular workers struggling for their own interests. Along the way, the drivers' union -- now locked in a crucial, perhaps lethal, battle with The Daily News -- has mounted strikes and slowdowns and tolerated violence and intimidation to prod and sometimes cripple employers in its fight for wages, benefits and job security for members who bundle and truck most of the region's newspapers and magazines.

On the corner of Utica and Sterling in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, in the light of a bright fall afternoon, Trent D. met a man who helped him through a neighborhood rite. The man gave Trent his first gun. The 16-year-old had no grand thoughts about what he was doing. He did not view himself as a menace to his community, he said, nor did he see himself as part of a huge phenomenon that has alarmed public officials and law-enforcement experts. He was angry and he needed a gun, he said, because someone had broken his Walkman radio. And that was all. Status and Glamour "It's not just want," Trent said. "It's need. Everybody's got one, so I got to have one."