[NUJ membe Technology', a a policy on the…]

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NUJ membe Technology', a a policy on the Thousands of print workers in the newspaper industry face the dole in the next ten years, regardless of whether newspapers are making profits.

New newspaper technology has given the employers a golden opportunity to remove up to 40% of their labour costs, with a relatively small capital outlay.

A complete production line of highly technical, lowstaffed machines is now feasible.

The introduction of technology, which has been taking place rapidly over the pass ten years, is expected to increase, outstripping the 63,000 print jobs lost between 1967 and 1976.

The loss of these jobs has almost without exception taken place with not a finger of resistance being lifted by the print union leaderships.

Converts

Far from trying to protect their members, the leaders of NGA, NATSOPA and SLADE have become converts to the wonders of job-cutting as a means of solving the economic problems of the Fleet Street papers.

A joint management/union document, A Programme For Action was presented to Fleet Street printers and journalists late last year with the full backing of the print union leaders.

Despite their best efforts this programme for the acceptance of technology and the loss of a massive number of jobs was decisively rejected by the membership.

Despite this vote, the 'reasonable' men who lead the big three print unions are so impressed with management arguments for getting rid of their members, that they intend to resubmit a similar programme to their Most dramatic In Fleet Street the battles and betrayals are still to come.

In the provinces, where caspapers are highly profitable businesses, much of the rechnology has already been introduced.

The next phase-where thousands of more jobs are ai stake-is in many ways the ost i amatic. Peter Melntyre reviews lew pamphlet published by hreat to thousands of jobs.

The technology exists for reporters to type copy on a visual display unit straight into a computer.

It can then be edited and sent for printing without ever being seen or handled by a compositor.

The technology also exists for the pages to be designed on the visual display units without printers having to paste up pages. (This method is now being introduced at the Daily Mirror in London although printers are operating the machine).

Endless

Much of this is already in use in some British papers and many more papers in America and Europe. The technical possibilities are seemingly endless.

Televisions can already be adapted to receive news and advertisements at will by calling them up from data NGA General Secretary Wade banks operated by the Post Office, BBC and ITA.

Faced with this wealth of technology traditional methods of defending jobs at a local level become inadequate.

The simple truth is that printers and journalists will either find a joint defence against the massive job cutting which is already in process or they will go down to a shattering defeat at the hands of the employers, in the knowledge that the paid army of bureaucrats inside the print unions have done as much as anyone to bring defeat about.

Last year the National Union of Journalists called For a year's ban on the introluction of 'direct entry' echnology (that is visual lisplay terminals) while a ommittee set up by the unnual delegates conference produced a policy.

The committee was larded 'Journalists and New ry the NUJ to develop with 'lefts' and has produced a report which adopts a militant hostility towards the technology. It will nevertheless be totally inadequate to defend those jobs.

Muddled

It presents a muddled amalgam of lines of defence, ranging from refusing to negotiate the introduction of the technology to little more than displays of bad temper once the machines have been introduced.

The pamphlet contains some useful research and an accurate description of what the new technology represents:

"New technology" as used in our industry, is euphemism for automation, whereby routine work that has been carried out manually or at least under the control of a worker is transferred to a machine which follows precisely defined instructions'.

It produces figures to support the 1976 Royal Commission on the Press contention that the employers' investment in new technology will be recouped within one or two years if they are allowed to carry out job-cutting on the scale that they require.

At 1975 prices every paper in Fleet Street could re-equip itself with 'cold type machinery for £20 million, spend another £30 million in getting rid of workers and "save" 7,000 jobs yielding £20 million a year.

The crisis of Fleet Street will even then not be so easily solved. The employers point to great 'gains' because they. are desperate to cut the jobs.

In fact they know as well as anyone that rising newsprint prices and cut throat competition for sales, as well as competition from television and radio advertising will leave the future of several Fleet Street papers far from secure.

Cut jobs

The latest stage of technology does more than just cut jobs. It also deskills traditional craft areas of work making it easy for the management to introduce scabs to get the technology introduced.

"Theoretically, workers are offered the elimination of drudgery. In practice, automation is applied selectively THIS TH UNION UNI SPE by management to cut jobs; lower the price of labour by reducing dependence on expensive skills; progressively remove from the worker control of the process and transfer it, via the machines to management'.

Non-union labour

The report outlines what happened at Media General, mond Virginia in 1970.. fot an American firm in Rich'In preparation for disputes with printing unions, the company had trained non union labour-secretaries, advertising and management personnel-to operate the new equipment which it had already installed.

When the unions walked out the paper was produced by this non-union labour; few of the 180 print workers who went on strike ever got their jobs back.

Since then the paper has been produced by cheap, non union labour with a turnover of 30-35% a year in the composing room'.

Inadequate

In Britain the Nottingham Evening Post broke the back of the NGA (while NUJ members scabbed on a strike) operating visual ournalists and now have display terminals with the loss of 120 production and editorial jobs.

The company owns a new non union printing plant just fifteen miles away from Nottingham which could, if need be, print the paper.

The policies put forward for the NUJ to adopt are totally inadequate. The committee talks about not accepting loss of jobs due to the technology without at any stage showing how this major battle can be lead.

It says moreover that the NUJ should seek agreements THIS IS YOUR UNION LEADERSHIP SPEAKING— YOU ARE FIRED!