All editorial staff - including members of both the National Union of Journalists and the recent rightwing breakaway British Association of Journalists, and those not in either were holding a consultative hallot on industria achon as With the recent installation of David Montgomery, a man schooled at Rupert Murdoch's News Intomational. as chiet executive of Mirror Group Newspaper. Wister Unionist Montgomery has a long union-busting track record. After the subsequent management reshuffle, two of MGN's three titles are now edited by ex-Murdoch men.
MGN publications, which alco include the Sunday Mirror. the People, Sporting Life and Some 100 freelances working on the Mirror have been sacked by its new editor, David Banks, with no warning and no pay-off as they turned up for work one morning While these journalists are described as casuals, in most cases. the word is extremely misleading Many have worked on the paper full time for several years.
"Casual shifts' are traditional on national newspapers. It is a good way for the bosses to try ut young journalists from papers holiday and sickness cover.
For established hacks, it is a chance to make £80-€100, cash in hand editing sports pages Sundays. While such is technically against the NU] rulebook, the proscription was all but unenis no holiday entitlement or even sickness cover.
And of course, if the boss doesn't like your face, you're simply not invited back. Comparisons with building workers or the offshore sector are not unfair.
There is also a political dimension to the Mirror crisis. Editorials have stressed that he paper woula contane to ack Labour at election times. However, an unnamed MGN anagement source quoted i e Financial Times said that th pap propaganda be "rantand concentrate instead on issues of to readers, like mortgages and other consumer issues"
The Mirror's star columnist Paul Foot - an SWP member and Britain's most widely-read socialist journalist - has rightly remarked: "I'm amazed at how unconcerned the Left is."
Even Neil Kinnock, the former Labour Party leader, has publicly commended the dismissed workers, while John Smith's office said that he was Spoof Mirror produced by sacked casuals "anxious about the validity of the assurances given about the olitical stance of the paper s Foot conduded: "The fi ture of the papers depend on how much workers here can stand up and assert their independence against this manage ment." No. 33 5 Dec, 1992
International News
How axeman's cuts have hit Daily Mirror