Keys Calls for Action
Socialist Press1980 1980-03-12Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 10 →
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Bill Keys, leader of the print union SOGAT, has been one of the few union General Secretaries openly to call for strike action on the TUC's "day of action" on May 14. • While TUC leader Len Murray sticks to his ludicrous call for "lunch time meetings'? and for "true-born Britishers" to exercise their rights to "take time off" sooner than strike, Keys has declared that:
"This should be a day of strike action., That is my personal view and the advice I shall give to my members"
Tens of thousands of SOGAT and NGA members are already coming to recognise the need for strike action in response to an insulting £7.70 pay offer from the British Printing Industries Federation.
In this context Keys' unusually militant stance on the issue of May 14 appears to be an effort to divert growing rank and file militancy away from the sharp issue of confrontation with the print employers, and into a generalised one-day token protest.