Sogat ready to do Fleet St deal without the NGA; Print union divided over negotiations with News Group
The growing conflict between print unions broke surface last night when Sogat '82 registered its determination to conclude a deal with News Group for its new Wapping printing plant without the National Graphical Association.
After a meeting of 150 Sogat representatives from The Sun, News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times, Brenda Dean, general secretary of the Union, said her members were 'heartily fed up' with the NGA's inability to come to terms with the transfer.
'If the NGA can't reach agreement with the company, it's their problem. If we can't negotiate with the NGA, we'll negotiate without them,' she said.
This hard-line approach is expected to be endorsed today by the union's national executive which will receive a full report of last night's meeting at Congress House.
Miss Dean said: 'Our members are saying that the days when one union can stop a newspaper are gone and that there is no job on a newspaper that Sogat members cannot do'.
But there was no question of a single-union agreement of the kind signed by the electricians' union with Mr Eddy Shah. It was up to the other unions to arrive at their own deals', she said.
Sogat representatives from News Group newspapers made it clear that the union must proceed with 'all haste' to a deal on Wapping, partly because of the 'appalling conditions' in The Sun's Bouverie Street press rooms.
The move to the new site has been held up because the NGA has insisted it should take over machine managers' jobs held by Sogat members. Elsewhere in Fleet Street the association organizes machine managers.
Meanwhile, Sogat is to seek a joint approach on newspaper technology with the right-wing electricians' union which would further shut out the NGA.
Preliminary proposals will be put before the Sogat executive today after talks last week between Miss Dean and officials of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union.
The planned alliance has emerged since the EETPU's single union no-strike deal with Mr Shah, who is proposing to publish a new national newspaper next spring. The Shah deal excludes both Sogat and the NGA, but allows scope for the recognition of the National Union of Journalists.
The prospect of joint deals in production departments between Sogat and the electricians will infuriate the NGA and if successful would add immeasurably to their difficulties with new technology on provincial titles.
Meanwhile Mr Norman Willis, general secretary of the TUC, is attempting to call a meeting of the labour movement's printing industries committee to negotiate a unified approach to the growing problems.
In a motion to the TUC Congress in September, the NGA has called on the TUC general council to start talks to rejuvenate proposals for one union for the printing and newspaper industry.
After a meeting of 150 Sogat representatives from The Sun, News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times, Brenda Dean, general secretary of the Union, said her members were 'heartily fed up' with the NGA's inability to come to terms with the transfer.
'If the NGA can't reach agreement with the company, it's their problem. If we can't negotiate with the NGA, we'll negotiate without them,' she said.
This hard-line approach is expected to be endorsed today by the union's national executive which will receive a full report of last night's meeting at Congress House.
Miss Dean said: 'Our members are saying that the days when one union can stop a newspaper are gone and that there is no job on a newspaper that Sogat members cannot do'.
But there was no question of a single-union agreement of the kind signed by the electricians' union with Mr Eddy Shah. It was up to the other unions to arrive at their own deals', she said.
Sogat representatives from News Group newspapers made it clear that the union must proceed with 'all haste' to a deal on Wapping, partly because of the 'appalling conditions' in The Sun's Bouverie Street press rooms.
The move to the new site has been held up because the NGA has insisted it should take over machine managers' jobs held by Sogat members. Elsewhere in Fleet Street the association organizes machine managers.
Meanwhile, Sogat is to seek a joint approach on newspaper technology with the right-wing electricians' union which would further shut out the NGA.
Preliminary proposals will be put before the Sogat executive today after talks last week between Miss Dean and officials of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union.
The planned alliance has emerged since the EETPU's single union no-strike deal with Mr Shah, who is proposing to publish a new national newspaper next spring. The Shah deal excludes both Sogat and the NGA, but allows scope for the recognition of the National Union of Journalists.
The prospect of joint deals in production departments between Sogat and the electricians will infuriate the NGA and if successful would add immeasurably to their difficulties with new technology on provincial titles.
Meanwhile Mr Norman Willis, general secretary of the TUC, is attempting to call a meeting of the labour movement's printing industries committee to negotiate a unified approach to the growing problems.
In a motion to the TUC Congress in September, the NGA has called on the TUC general council to start talks to rejuvenate proposals for one union for the printing and newspaper industry.