Daily News typographers are latest layoffs

SINCE the huge layoffs that resulted in 93 people losing their jobs at the Daily News on July 23, smaller tremors have now pushed the total to 103.

Five more, all members of the International Typographical Union — which has been without a contract since April — are facing their last day Friday.

The move caught some by surprise because Tronc, the Chicago-based parent company, which was originally consolidating design and production work for all its papers at a hub in Chicago, soon realized that idea was creating a very messy hometown paper and began farming some of the work back to New York. The five had also been kept busy working on other commercial jobs that print in the Jersey City plant whose outside clients include the freebie Metro New York and the weekly Queens Courier.

No WARN notice has been filed informing state Labor Department of the latest layoffs, and they have apparently not been granted the same 90 days advance notice as their colleagues. Tronc filed the original WARN notice only after pressure from Gov. Cuomo.

In addition to the 103 layoffs, Media Ink exclusively reported the News’ most famous columnist, Michael Lupica, left in order to step up his bookwriting endeavors for Penguin Putnam. He is going to resume the Sunny Randall detective novels of the late Robert B. Parker, with “Blood Feud” due out in November. In addition, his latest YA book, “No Slam Dunk,” hits Nov. 6.