Lock-out in the print

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About 45,000 NGA printers have been locked out since Monday in frontal assault on their union rights. • The printers-in provincial newspapers, book publishers and general printing housesare nominally locked out for taking sporadic and limited action over this year's pay claim.

In fact the British Printing Industries Federation and the Newspaper Society are launching a major challenge to demarcation- lines and the unions' traditional grip on employment.

The dispute has the potential to develop quickly into an all-out attack on the NGA closed shop.

It is therefore of critical importance to every print union and to the whole organised the cuts: i The NGA has claimed a minimum basic wage of £75 a week with a minimum earnings level of £80 a week.

In addition the union is demanding a two-stage reduction in hours from 40 to 37½ by April 1981.

The crucial flexibility clauses which management are demanding have already been conceded by the NGA leadership.

crafts in the print setting and -between all crafts in the machine room:

In addition, print machibes will be allowed to run by the union when less than a full crew reports for duty or there is an "unavoidable absence"

The BPIF and the Newspaper society are still looking for other clauses, such as a demand that they would have the right to fill jobs from outside the NGA lists if the NGA had not done so within a month.

The employers are now demanding that the union take offensive 1,300°(PC urentrat have been sacked following a wage aistrike in support of a The journalists work for magazines within the group and for Butterworth and Hamlyn book publishing subsidiaries.

the issue to a secret ballot.

But although the NGA leadership has stood firm in the face of the lock out, NGA members can have no confidence in their leadership:

The union should call immediate strike of the whole of Fleet Street to bring' the employers quickly to their knees.

The longer the lock out lasts the greater will be the incentive for management to offer full protection to scabs to return to work in an attempt to break the NGA closed shop:

NGA members will have to struggle to break free of the bureaucratic hold of the union leadership to turn the struggle onto the offensive.

Picket lines must be made effective and demand support from other workers.

A national lock-out committee must be set up to coordinate the struggle and the strings must be removed from the agreement.