10 Per Cent Limit

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In a decisive week for provincial journalists the National Executive of the NUJ is to be reconvened over the Darlington closed shop dispute and a new campaign is to be launched against the 10% limit.

The moves came from a first ever meeting called of delegates from every chapel in the country in Birmingham at the weekend.

About 150 chapels responded-despite a refusal by NUJ finance committee to meet travelling costs-and they voted overwhelmingly to reject the 10% offer by the Newspaper Society.

GIO R MIA N FACTORY:

The NUJ claim for a £23 a week increase, an extra week's holiday, a 35-hour week including meal breaks, better maternity leave, paternity leave, London weighting and other benefits was treated with contempt by the Newspaper Society negotiators.

Hypocrisy

They told the NUJ that all government advertising would be withdrawn if they broke the teeirer hypocrisy was revealed at the Birmingham meeting. When the chairman called for delegates whose members had received under the table payments to come forward one tenth of the PORKE FRODU ACKED DINING ThE TONU delegates rose the microphone.

In some cases these payments were up to £15 a week extra, paid weeks before the votes at mandatory meetings on the pay offer.

In other words the Newspaper Society was prepared to break the 10% limit in selected areas to buy off national actions on the claim.

Don Sutton, chairman of the Provincial Newspapers Industrial Council, weakly told the meeting that he had not known about the deals.

Rightly the PNIC took a hammering from the floor for its handling of the claim. Witho, without explaining to Without launching camthe membership why further meetings with the employers were pointless (which they were) the PNIC told chapels to vote on all out strike action over the claim.

Campaign In confusion many chapels who opposed the 10% offer voted against strike action.

The voting showed 124 chapels for a strike, 128 against and a staggering 100 chapels did not meet at all on the question.

The meeting has called for a campaign to be followed by a new meeting of delegates to reconsider action.

NUJ General Secretary, Ken Ashton, came under pressure from Mike Duggan for Beginning He blank refused saying they were a matter National Executive.

It was left up to 'left' talking Denis McShane, Vice President, to declare that he would see that a National Executive meeting was reconvened immediately saying 'I don't want to see Darlington treading water for a fortnight' He finished the meeting declaring that on pay the NUJ stood "at the beginning of the fight, not the end of it".

Without a sharp, sustained fight against the vacillating leadership the campaign's end will be as inglorious as its beginning.

*No to wage controls!

*Spread the Darlington strike!