Eleventh hour in fight for print unity

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Fighting for NGA support: journalists picket gates in their last pay dispute after dispute, take the side with the employers for the one day strikes, has had no of the employers. Unity NUJ and sit on the sidelines. choice but to accept the After the Lord Mayor's Show-the dustcart.

Even before echoes from rhetoric about print unity have died away from the National Union of Journalists' conference earlier this month, the grim reality of print disunity is being rammed down the throat of the union's members.

NUJ General Secretary Ken Ashton, assured the journalists' union that NGA leader Joe Wade had asked for a declaration of intent, and on the strength of that won a 12 month perspective towards fusion of the two unions.

But fusion talks bureaucrat-style, mean that you do not hinder their progress with embarrassing questions about picket lines.

Two crucial disputes have brought flat refusals of support from NGA officials.

At Pergamon Press in Oxford the same NGA official who has been promising NUJ officials the earth has now declared that NGA members are not entitled to black journalists' work.

He claimed that the union could not bear the cost of Maxwell action members.

Robert took iliatory agains NGA Yet Maxwell's attack on the right to strike and the right to any independent unions in his company will prove fatal to NGA members if it succeeds.

The struggle against the closure of the Camden Journal, which now encompasses strike action by jour nalists in three centres in the Midlands and at two centres in Wales is also being squeezed of life by the NGÀ instructions to members to work normally'-by which they mean carry on scabbing.

The Save the Camden Journal paper being run by strikers in London has been receiving regular advertisements of support from the London Regional Council of SOGAT and from the NGA, but in reality both unions have abandoned the sacked workers to their fate.

There can be no moves towards print unity while the print unions, in dispute between general secretaries is of no benefit to members.

Like Olympian gods the NGA officials have now offered to convene a meeting The NUJ, which has fought the closure with tenacity and has called out provincial members in London on a series of rolling NGA offer in the vain hope of demonstrating that only supporting action will win the day.

The NGA on the other hand will use the talks to The Transitional Programme in Today's Class The founding programmatic document of the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee Available, price 80p including postage from WSL BM Box 5277, London WCIN 3XX twist the NUJ's arms to accept simply a higher rate of redundancy pay.

In both disputes members have now been sacked for standing up to vicious managements. The print unions, which have been organısing meetings on the unioh-busting Employment Act and trumpeting verbal opposition to it are in practice helping its provisions to be implemented.

Selling jobs

This attitude will bring down disaster on their own members.

Even while they are retusing to support the NUJ's fight against Robert Maxwell in Oxford, the leaders of all the print unions are busy selling their members' jobs throughout BPC which Maxwell has just bought.

While thousands of their own members are being dumped on the scrap heap the small flames of a real struggle against the employers are an embarrassing and dangerous accusation.

That is why they seek to smother them.

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of the SYL in the present crisis Price 30p including postage WCIN 3XX government that the recession is now "flattening out" should not fool workers into thinking things will get any better.

The CBI has deliberately avoided using the term "bottoming out" , since all the figures indicate is that the rate of actual decline has slackened. There is still no sign of any upturn.

The small rise in industrial production in February was accompanied by a continued surge of closures and redundancies and further pressure to hold down wages.

Insofar as retail sales and production do begin to pick up once again it seems certain that employers who have found it impossible to raise prices in a plunging market will all hasten to whack in price rises to make good their losses-producing a huge leap in inflation.

And increased production does not necessarily mean increased employment -since in every industry management are pursuing an all-out drive for speed-up, new technology and rationalisation designed to maximise the exploitation of the workforce.

It is of course not impossible that the present generalised capitalist recession could find room for periodic upturns.

But what is excluded is that the working class should benefit.

The only way jobs and living standards can secured is through the establishment of a planned, socialist economy. And neither the CBI nor Thatcher is forecasting that!

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