The print dispute: a fight for trade-union rights ON JANUARY 24, press magnate Rupert Murdoch provoked a strike by 5,500 union members employed on production of his four newspapers - The Times, The Sunday Times, the News of the World, and The Sun. He moved production of the newspapers from Fleet Street, London's traditional newspaper-producing area, to Wapping in East London and demanded drastic reductions in the workforce, refusing to recognise long-established trade-union rights. When the four unions involved protested with strike action, every single worker was sacked, and the unions' funds were later sequestered.
Since then the sacked trade unionists and their supporters have been out regularly to Wapping to picket the new plant which is built like a fortress, complete with barbed wire, guard towers and a moat. The building is thus equipped in order to protect the scab members of the electricians' union, the EETPU, now working inside the new plant.
We spoke to Larry and Jackie Hyett about the dispute and its wider implications. Larry was sacked from the Sunday Times and is a member of the London Machine branch of the SOGAT '82 union. Jackie is active in the support unit for the printworkers in the London borough of Lambeth. Both are members of the Labour Party.
Question. Can you explain to us what the dispute is about?
Larry Hyett. There are five unions involved. SOGAT '82 [Society of Graphical and Allied Trades], which is my union, NGA [National Graphical Association], AUEW [Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers] and NUJ [National Union of Journalists], which is only partly on strike. There is also the EETPU [Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union], which is not on strike at the present moment. A section of the EETPU membership is acting as scabs in this dispute by working for Murdoch at the Wapping print works.
The strike is basically over trade-union rights and trade-union recognition at the new Wapping plant. This is what brought me out on strike, when Rupert Murdoch proposed, without negotiation, the following conditions of work:
- That there would be no closed shop. This would mean that employees who are members of a union could leave it at any time. This is a basic principle as far as I'm concerned because this undermines union strength. gth.
- That anyone taking part in a strike or industrial action would be subject to immediate dismissal without the right of appeal. That is, that there is no right to strike.
- That there would be no recognition of different chapels [branches] and no negotiation with them. This is a further effort to undermine in-house agreements.
- That new technology could be adopted at any time, followed by job cuts.
As rank-and-file members, our view is that new technology should be used to benefit the workers and enhance working conditions, not just to increase the profits of multinational companies.
Another fundamental issue was that the employer has the exclusive right to manage. In other words management can hire and fire, transfer, demote etc. as they see fit. All this would be legally binding upon union members. Within this framework, the management demanded that any union representative could be deselected from his or her position for any misdemeanour.
We are totally opposed to these conditions. We want independent trade unions The neontiations at tha trade unions. The negotiations at the Sunday Times started some 18 months
International Viewpoint 21 April 1986
ago. An agreement was drawn up and signed. This agreement was torn up by a new management representative named Pole-Carew - a notorious union-bashing agency. Our negotiations involved the transfer to new sites and the introduction of increased pagination. Our current workplace only has a capability of printing 80 pages. We signed an agreement that we would print 170 pages on the Sunday Times. We knew that would have to be linked to a transfer programme. The News of the World also had a signed agreement to move with the staff to Wapping. That agreement was also torn up before the union's eyes.
These are the reasons why today we find ourselves in dispute.
Q. In the meantime, Murdoch had already taken people on at Wapping?
LH. This is true. He told us that he was preparing for a new publication at Wapping called the London Post. He said this was why he needed the extra staff. We now realize that this was a lie. These fabrications were engineered by management to prolong negotiations. During the new set of negotiations the terms I outlined earlier were drawn up. The dispute was clearly provoked by the management.
Through leaks from solicitors' offices we later learned that Murdoch had been advised that the best way for him to get rid of the original workforce, from a legal point of view, was through sacking them whilst on strike. So now 6,000 of us have been sacked.
Q. What is the position of the EETU on Fleet Street in this dispute?
LH. The EETPU press branch is a very militant branch. They support our action. They have not taken industrial action to support us yet though.
As far as I am concerned, we need to step up the dispute and there are a number of ways that we can do that.
One way is to call for the boycotting of media coverage which tries to put forward adverse propaganda against strikers and their supporters. The other way is to spread the dispute to other newspapers. During the dispute every other newspaper title has been waiting to introduce similar measures on the back of Murdoch's battle with the unions. Every title is making demands for redundancy and for the introduction of new technology whilst Murdoch has been in dispute. For example on the Daily Telegraph the negotiations with the day- and night-shift workers have been frozen pending the outcome of the dispute. The Daily Mirror is the same.
International Viewpoint 21 April 1986
We must resolve these problems by escalating the Murdoch dispute and taking it to the other national newspapers.
Q. What support have you received from other unions or from the Labour Party?
LH. The Labour Party is keeping a very low profile. They are giving us the same type of support they gave to the miners.
Other unions have given us more support than they originally gave the miners. The Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) has issued an instruction from the National Executive Council, telling their drivers not to cross our picket lines. The drivers, unfortunately, have chosen not to observe these.
Other unions outside the printing industry have shown quite a bit of financial and moral support. Through the pressure of the rank and file, physical support is building up too.
We are now advocating mass picketing and we have won the political argument within SOGAT in actually bringing about mass picketing. We have pressurized the National Executive which was reluctant to do this, and now the strike is being run by the London District Committee. The numbers on the picket lines have grown from hundreds into thousands. For example, on March 15 there were 8,000-10,000 workers on the picket line at Wapping. In my opinion you saw true workers' power on the streets that day. First the picketers destroyed the perimeter railings of what has become known as fortress Wapping. Barricades were erected at major road junctions used by scab lorry drivers. Printers and other trade unionists helped to defend them. Vehicles were used to block the road. The police used every effort but were unable to beat us into submission.
Women were shoulder to shoulder with the men that night. They helped to dismantle buildings, to build barricades. These are the types of actions we think are going to lead to the turn in the tide against trade unionism in this country.
•This is putting pressure on the union nationally. I don't have much faith in them but they are beginning to change. Brenda Dean, general secretary of SOGAT, has said that "We will rely on traditional trade-union tactics." The way I interpret that statement, it should mean: boycotting of all Murdoch's products, world wide; mass picketing and support from the wider trade-union movement.
Q. Jackie, what is your role in the strike and what are you doing?
Jackie Hyett. Well, I was involved
Murdoch's gimmick
FOR MOST print union members
Murdoch's latest offer to end the print dispute is no more than a gimmick.
The offer involves handing over the £12 million Fleet Street site, which Murdoch deserted in order to set up the scab plant at Wapping, to the unions to run their own newspaper. Murdoch is hoping to play on the fact that for many years now the labour movement has wanted to have its own daily newspaper.
At the 15,000 strong labour movement rally held in support of printworkers on April 6 in London, the offer was rejected by most of the speakers, although some Labour
Party leaders are said to be favourable to the idea. In fact the rally itself, which was also addressed by
NUM leader Arthur Scargill and attended by many miners' contingents, is testimony to the growing support that is building up behind the printworkers. in setting up a support unit in our area from day one of the strike. I have supported Larry in everything that he has done. We have tried to get lists of the names of other wives but so far this hasn't been forthcoming from the union chapel. The wives turned out on the women's demonstration but it's more difficult to get them involved in picketing. The first women's demonstration was completely spontaneous - it wasn't advertised and about 3,000 women turned up. The second time was on March 8, International Women's Day, and about 6,000 women turned up, from the wider movement as well. That night we did stop production. But a lot of women had kids with them and didn't want to do the picketing.
The support unit was set up by the Labour Party. I support the fight for trade unionism in this country whether you're employed or unemployed. If this Tory government and Maggie Thatcher are allowed to get away with what they are doing in our country, trade unionism will be no more. I was involved in getting the support unit for the miners off the ground and I have been politically active for some time now. I think if more printers had been involved during the miners' strike that would have helped our fight today.
Q. What does the support group do?
JH. At the first meeting there were about 100 people. We discussed how to get people down to the picket lines - lots of people don't want to go on their own. Meetings have been so i spoken, arranged. Larry and his comrades have spoken at between 70 and 80 meetings. We have raised about
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BRITAIN £3,000. We have had a tremendous response from unions, especially NALGO [National Association of Local Government Officers], the NUT [National Union of Teachers] and from women's groups, gays and lesbians and the Black community. I think there are now 17 support units within the London area. There are also support groups further afield and they are federated into the union of support groups.
Q. What did you learn from the miners' strike?
LH. Personally, - learnt a lot from it because I was heavily involved in the miners' dispute. We saw the police tactics in that dispute and we saw other unions' responses to the miners. This is why I say we must be strong as printworkers and rely upon traditional trade-union tactics.
What we learnt from the miners' strike was that we could not trust the laws of this land to give justice to working-class people. We must use our industrial strength to bring about justice. The strongest weapon we have is organized labour. We must agitate for the shutdown of Fleet Street and we must agitate for the Trades Union Congress [TUC] to implement its pledges. The TUC holds the ultimate weapon, which is to expel the EETPU so that the rank and file of that union can elect a new leadership. There have been many resolutions passed by rank-and-file electricians from about 30 branches, calling for expulsion and no-confidence in Eric Hammond and the rest of the executive. Also, if the Tory laws continue we must agitate and organize for a general strike.
The main difference between the miners' strike and the printworkers' strike is that in the miners' strike coal was stockpiled: you can't stockpile newspapers. Every day is a new fight in the print industry. Today's news is tomorrow's fish-and-chip paper.
Q. Have you received any international solidarity?
LH. Yes, we had a public rally at Wembley Stadium two weeks ago. We received pledges of solidarity from Scandinavian countries, and from Canada and the United States. This is where the paper comes from. In Australia, also, chapel representatives Will discuss the dispute at a forthcoming national meeting. We welcome that support and any other support from trade unionists worldwide. Messages of support should be sent to SOGAT at 274-288, London Road, Hadleigh Essex. Tel: 01-261 9302. Larry and Jackie can be contacted through the Lambeth Support Unit on 01-733 5670. 10
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Demonstrators lobby the TUC. On the left general secretary Brenda Dean (DR)