INSIDE revenue.
issue is jobs. This week several national newspapers did not appear, or came out in limited editions due to two different industrial disputes. The Daily Mirror has lost 22,500,000 copies and E1,150,000 in circulation and advertising Behind the bosses' threats and union in-fighting, one issue overshadows all in the current Fleet Street row. As MICK GOSLING explains, the ton.
ANTI-SEXIST CODE cesses.
consistent disregard for women's attempt workers.
The claim of the National Graphical Association for a paltry 40 pence a week to maintain its traditional differential over noncraft workers has led to a new showdown on the national press.
The press barons, organised in the powerful Newspaper Publishers Association, have seized on this in order to threaten the dismissal of 7,000 NGA members unless they call off their industrial action. This blatant provocation on the purt of the employers is exposed by the simultaneous sacking in a separate dispute of 750 clerical members of the National Society of Operative Printers, Graphical and Media Personnel (NATSOPA) working on the Dally Mirror, which is not a member of the Publishers AssociaHARD LINE The hard line taken by the press burons is a reflection of their desperation to introduce cost-cutting techniques into the archaic newspaper industry. During the past year inflation and a 70 por cent rise in newsprint costs have wrecked the budgets of all the newspaper groups. The only way the industry can survive is by a massive introduction of new technological proComputer photosetting and faster printing presses mean one thing cuts in jobs. Beaverbrook papers are already using rotary presses that produce papers at twice the rate of the old machines but need less men to man them This led last year to Beaverbrook's closure of its Glasgow plant and the transferring of its Scottish production to its Manchester works.
What stands in the way of the Beaverbrooks and the Thomsons introducing further mass redundancies is the traditional craft consciousness and high level of union orpanisation of the printIt is this same craft consciousness which introduces a further contra try.
*********** dictory clement into the situation. The varying print unions will fiercely defend their own jobs, but often at the expense of other print workers. The reason the members of the NGA are taking action is not for a pathetic 40 pence a week, but because they believe that if they allow their traditional status to be croded they will be the first to be dismissed.
Unlike the other print unions the NGA refused to de register when the Tory Government brought in the Industrial Relations Act, and therefore it is not party to the pay negotiations which take place between the other five print unions and the publishers. It was at the meeling to discuss the annual pay claim which began in Septembor, that the new pay deal was worked out which eroded the NA's differential by 40 pence. Hence the NGA's action.
Now the employers are seeking to exploit the divisions between the NGA and the other print unions as part of a softening-up process prior to the introduction of massive sackings If the plans of the press harons are to be deicated, these splits in the ranks must be overcome, NGA members have piven full support to the union's action because they Tear that a defeat over the 40 pence would weaken them in the fight to maintain jobs on new processes. Instead of turning to the other unions for a joint fight against any redundancies, they preferred to argue their case to a capitalist court in the absurd hope that a judge would declare it illegal for a capitalist to dispense with workers! Such a policy is a recipe for defeat and demoralisation.
As the workers at the Drily Express in Glasgow showed last year, whatever the limitations of the final settlement, the way to fight redundancy and closures is not through the maintenance of craft differentials and illusions in the capitalist courts but through mass united militant action.
By tuking over the valuable equipment contained in their place of work and chailenging capitalist Legality the unions can light sackings from a position of strength and take the first steps towards workers contrul over the whole of the indus-