Screaming Blue
TRAFFIC lights on the ramp of the fortress in Wapping where press baron Rupert Murdoch plans his showdown with the print unions are said to be linked to the light in nearby streets, so scab lorries can run a series of green lights through the
The truth of the story will become seems inevitable — the battle of Wapping begins. It ought to be true since it illustrates the degree of sheer military planning that has gone into this deadly serious attempt to break the Fleet Street unions once and for all.
The Metropolitan police claimed that Insi year's riots at Tottenham had been planned weeks in advance. There were lurid and unsubstantiated reports that garages had been flood-
THE
Murdoch!
By a SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT ed with petrol ready to burn
I the Metropolitan police commis sioners are truly worried about preparations for riot they should even now be speeding in squad cars to arrest Murdoch and hs management team.
An the pind the barbed ire peat
with the of barbed wire that guards military airfields. TV cameras scan the approach roads and vehicles vanish out of sight of the gates before unloading or loading their cargoes. The building includes its own helicopter pad
The plant, built at a cost of about £60m, part of a total investment nearer 1100m, is a testimony to the military style of industrial relations adopted in the coalfields in 1984 and 1985. Murdoch complains half heartedly that negotiations with the print unions broke down over the use of the new plant. The very walls of the building defy any belief that a negotlated settlement was ever on the cards.
The Wapping plant has been years
*TIMES
Socialist Viewpoint No. 10 February 1985 p3 in the building and years in the planning. The print unions, foolishly complacent in the strength of their organisation in Fleet Street, did nothing to stop its development.
When in September 1985 an BEIPU official in Southampton revealed in Socialist Worker that mass recruitment was taking place in his area to recruit workers for Wapping, the print unions dismissed it as wild rumour and unthinkable. Brenda Dean, SOGAT General Secretary. said she was pleased to say that management had denied the rumous.
In fact recruitment had been going on for weeks and in Scotland a similar process was taking place for workers to fill Murdoch's other fortress, a converted warehouse at Kinning Park in Glasgow.
In both cases the jobs were being filled with the active help of the EBTPU. Local officials in Southampton and Glasgow were used as employment agencies. Job applications were posted to the home addresses of the EETPU officials who sat in on all the job interviews.
In Southampton these jobs were theoretically for Murdoch's planned Daily Post belleves will be printed - and in. a paper nobody
NEWS FE
WORLD
volved six month contracts for which sums of up to £15,000 were being offered. Also on offer was a free run at 5.00am every day from Southampton to Wapping in a company which picked the workers up inside the gates in the evening and made sure they never had to come face to face with any Fleet Street spies.
Workers accepting jobs in the factory were told that they would not be forced to become members of union, but that if they did so the EETPU would be the union recognised. At this time in theory Murdoch was "'negotiating" through his sidekick
Bill O'Neill with the print unions at the Times, Sunday, News of the World
Negotiations — with a deadline of Christmas were around a document which made four major attacks on the unions. It demanded the end to the closed shop, a legally binding no strike agreement, the chapel structure, and the manage"
The right to manage Included the end to the print union's control of labour, and the right of management to change statfing levels at any time.
The proposis to SOGAT included the following: "New technology may be adopted at any time with consequential reductions in manning ment." ...and There will demarcation lines".
on offer removed union altogether trom supervisory management grades.
The icing on the cake was the proposal for "union democracy"
chapels had been abolished. Union representatives for the would be strictly limited in number and elected annually by secret ballot.
Their duties would not be to represent their members but to uphold the no-strike deal. The union is asked to sign an assurance that it will not promote, sponsor, engage in, finance or coach, a
The Rt. Hon. Norman Tebbit, MP, (Former imes, sun anc change, but is tackling the problems that can arise. including technical skills training. I see this condone practical any industrial action.
the end to
"right to appeal.
Clause representatives and other got the requirebe no
. Th five year deal rights and be reads:
receives a disciplinary after union representative whole plant representative replace him.
table not only
Secretary of State for Industry, present
Chairman of the Conservative Party). *The EEPTU not only accepts technological es apiece with the Union's progressive approach on the shopfloor and elsewhere." strike action and will repudiate as soon as is reasonably fice, in
Employees who strike will be immediately dismissed without right of
12.3 reads: "It is understood and agreed that unior come officials proposals. have a special duty to enforce this rection, including the obligation no to engage in any stoppage of work."
Just in case any union official hasn't message clause 11.3 states: 'No individual who has received any ed blithely on. formal warnings from the Employer under its disciplinary procedure will eligible for election", and 11]
"If a union representative warning he shall cease at once to hold office as a and a new shall be elected to
This document proved unaccep to SOGAT, NGA AUEW and the NUJ, but also to the action.) London press branch of the EETPU. which tried in the early 1980s to break away from its organisation and Socialist Viewpoint No. 10 February 1985p4
George Harris, Personnel Manager. Toshiba
Consumer Products, "Along with the EEPTU we have charted an exciting new approach that cuts out futile strife and offers fair rewards for all those involved." join SOGAT. The TUC under a Bridiington ruling, forced the members to tay with the electricians it this point the EETPU head of the shape of national organiser Tom Rice and General Secretary Eric Hammond, stepped into help its London branch overoblections to the Murdoch
The TUC has warned print unions not to conclude separate deals with Murdoch, but the EETPU, the blood still fresh on its claws from mauling the TUC over ballot money, plough-
At the time this article was being prepared, SOGAT and the NGA had completed ballots on strike action throughout Murdoch's empire: the Times, Sunday Times, Sun and News of the World. Both were confident of large majorities, but seemingly not confident of what to do with those maJoritles. (The first supplement to be printed at Wapping for the Sunday Times was distributed without any
The unions have been forced to come together for the first time in years, and even while still fighting an
internecine war in the provincial press. But the price of that unity has been one concession after another to Murdoch's demands. The no-strike deal has been ruled out by all these unions, but they are offering Murdoch a deal which in Brenda Dean's words would "make strikes very, very unlikely". Murdoch however is no longer interested in unions bowing the knee. He has decided to do without them — except for the figleaf of EETPU involvement.
The mood of the members in Fleet Street has swung from black pessimism towards defiance, but they are nevertheless faced with the unedifying prospect of launching industrial action against a background of a whole new production plant geared up ready to run, on a batteground of the employer's choosing and on a site which is as near picketproot as it is possible to make a building.
The weak point in Murdoch's strategy is likely to be the chain of distribution, which by its nature is vulnerable and difficult to establish.
It would be easy to point to the crimes of the past - not least the failure of the print union leaderships to take Murdoch on when it became clear what he was attempting, and the roadiness of each Fleet Street chapel to look inwards and avoid inter-union solidarity because of its own traditional strength.
The task now however is to draw up a battle plan for fighting Murdoch that will work. Part of that plan will need to be the rapid expulsion of the EETPU from the TUC.
Silentnight strike