MURDOCH SHOULD SHOW MERCY

Peter Paterson argues that

the printing revolution could go too far

WITH that mischievous sense of timing which has led his TUC colleagues in exasperation to want to banish him from their ranks, Eric Hammond, leader of the electricians' union, the EETPU, spent Tuesday morning at the Waldorf Hotel explaining `Moneywise', a comprehensive, workshop-to-the-grave financial package for his members produced in co-operation with firms like Cornhill, the Prudential, M & G Unit Trusts and the Halifax Building Society. In the afternoon he was at Con- gress House facing charges laid by the print unions that he has colluded with Rupert Murdoch in the astonishing revolution which has suddenly and completely broken traditional union power in the national newspaper industry.

Hammond and the Electricians have turned all previous ideas about the aim and purpose of British trade unionism upside down. He is the apostle of co-operation, of no-strike agreements, of single-union rep- resentation. And now, at the Waldorf Hotel, the room filled with the smooth- suited representatives of the big names in the world of financial consumerism, he was quietly explaining why it was the job of the union to offer its members approved arrangements for life insurance, mort- gages, cheap holidays and a towing service should their cars break down on the motorway. It is not precisely a question of what Mr Hammond does — elements of `Moneywise' have been adopted by many other unions — but the fact that in his soft-spoken, unassuming and often humor- ous way he spits in the face of trade union tradition.

Hammond understands, and enjoys, the effect he has on his TUC colleagues. He knows that his suspension, and eventual expulsion, will have far more disastrous consequences for the TUC than for the inelegantly acronymed EETPU, which one wag at Tuesday's financial press confer- ence suggested should be renamed the Commercial Union. He sees the awful decline of trade union membership, popu- larity and even relevance, and believes that his approach is the only way to reverse the trend.

The print unions can be forgiven for failing to see the future in the same light as Eric Hammond. With one catastrophic stroke, Rupert Murdoch has smashed a union power base built up over a century. A Murdoch moonlight flit from Fleet Street and the Grays Inn Road to Wapping has left 5,000 print workers, many of them enjoying incomes of up to £35,000 a year, suddenly jobless. Mortgages, holiday plans, cosy working arrangements, businesses on the side — all that the print workers held dear has been swept away overnight.

At Wapping, behind the impregnable fortifications, members of Mr Hammond's union have learned to do the jobs of the printers — to such effect that it takes only one tenth of the old labour force to produce the four Murdoch titles. As one Daily Telegraph journalist remarked the other day as he contrasted the smudgily printed, literal-strewn pudding of a news- paper he works for with a crisply printed copy of the Wapping Times: 'And we're supposed to be producing this with the full co-operation and goodwill of the print unions!'

However, the general sense of euphoria in Fleet Street over Murdoch's coup may be short-lived. It is difficult to have any sympathy with the print unions over their lost world, their years of supremacy and arrogance, and their ban on technological advance. But they did constitute part of a system, partners in a symbiotic relationship in which they instinctively played the domi- nant role over a supine and submissive management class.

Murdoch has swept all this away, but unless we wish to see our national press reduced to a constant diet of the Sun and the Times in the morning and the News of the World and Sunday Times at the weekend, some thought has to be given to the papers left behind in Fleet Street.

We have had virtually useless Royal Commissions on the newspaper industry in the past, and there is no call for one now. But the circumstances in which News International broke free of the deathly embrace of the print unions at least merit a court of inquiry under the chairmanship of some distinguished judicial figure, aided, preferably, by independent union and management assessors. For it involved a degree of bad faith and duplicity on the Part of management and incompetence by the unions which it might be in the public interest to examine.

Up until May last year, after five years of admittedly deeply frustrating negotiations, NI appeared to be still bargaining seriously with the unions over the manning of Wapping. One group — ironically, it was the Electricians — was within 'two bodies' of agreeing the proper numbers to be employed there. It is the firm belief of the union negotiator concerned that one more meeting would have solved the problem. Perhaps other unions were not so far advanced. At any rate, there were no more talks until Murdoch produced his ultima- tum — a no-strike deal, legally binding working agreements and a declaration of management's right to manage — i.e. an end to the unions acting as labour contrac- tors — in September.

The unions believed that they were talking only about a new London evening newspaper, the Post. The more fools they, for Murdoch was already planning his revolution. Nor did they take seriously, given their normal experience in Fleet Street, the Murdoch deadline of 23 Dec- ember.

Murdoch has pauperised 5,000 workers overnight, and challenged the other papers to do what he knows is impossible for them to do. By saving an estimated £60 million on his annual production costs, he is in a Position to reduce the cover price of, say, the Times, to the destruction of the Tele- graph and the Guardian, or undercut all his rivals on advertising rates, to the point where their more gradualist reforms will turn into a series of labour wars, with the unions desperately hanging on to what is left to them. In other words, it is not in the interests either of the unions or the other proprietors, nor even the newspaper- reading public, to allow Rupert Murdoch to get away with it. What, then, is to be

done?

Apart from a court of inquiry, the outlines of a solution which will leave News International with most of their spoils, would restore printing jobs to the printers, give Murdoch's rivals a chance of survival, and save any necessity to destroy the unicameral nature of British trade union government by expelling the Electricians from the TUC, can be drawn.

First, there has to be a recognition that there is no longer any room for two independent print unions. The National Graphical Association's main function has been overtaken by new technology as surely as the stage coach had to give way to the railway and the motor car. The NGA is virtually broke anyway, after paying out £2 million in fines and costs in its attempts to destroy Eddie Shah in his previous man- ifestion as a free-sheet owner in Warring- ton. It should merge with, or be aban- doned by, the larger union, the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades — thus set- tling a quarrel started in the 1920s by their predecessors which made it impossible for them to reach an agreement on Wapping when the going was good, and the Mur- doch heart had not hardened.

Second, the question of the present labour force at Wapping — apart from the journalists — must be addressed. Most of them, apparently, are electricians recruited largely in Southampton (and, in the case of NI's Glasgow plant, in Scotland). Those who were on the dole, or trapped in uncongenial jobs, have had their hearts and their hopes lifted. They have an indisputable investment in the jobs at Wapping. But their continued presence robs print workers of their livelihood, and risks the expulsion of their union from the TUC. If they are to go, they must be bought out. And the price ought to be paid by the print unions as a penalty for their own incompetence as negotiators and pro- tectors of their members, probably to the tune of £7,000 to £8,000 per job.

Murdoch in any event will probably need to reoccupy at least the Times complex in Grays Inn Road, even if it is only to lift the morale of his stricken journalists, few of whom can bear to live and move and have their being in Wapping. And he may, in the end, need extra capacity for his quality papers, which may soon be jeopardised by breakdowns of the overstretched machin- ery at Wapping. So it could be in his own interest, having taught them no end of a lesson, to make peace with the traditional unions.

Finally, and it may be a bitter pill to swallow, the print unions would have no alternative to accepting the whole Mur- doch deal on new technology, legally bind- ing no-strike agreements, an end to labour contracting, Spanish practices and the rest of the baggage from the carefree and careless past. The achievements of the revolution — low-cost production — must be allowed to triumph for the sake of the whole newspaper community.