Mercury STRIKE!
STRIKE!
Photo: G.M. COOKSON (Socialist Challenge)
to call an all-out strike Socialist Challenge 7 December 1978 page 4 TRIKE,e Mercury Local journalists lobby last Friday's NEC meeting, which decided left of it, thatis.
shaping up.
to 7 to call out all provincial and OUTSISES beginning of this week. It was a SurOnSine deCisIon Sanctions have operation in most offices since 10 November and in a number of areas could do more production being on the inside than going out to a picket line.
But maintain sanctions was that its advocates provided no strategy for actually winning our claim for £20 What's more, management completely There have been no new offers, and my guess is that with the lucrative pre-Christmas issues, which are fat with advertising, they were hoping to hold on JEANGRAY, secretary of Journalists Charter, told Socialist Challenge how this battle against low pay is The NUJ executive voted 14] until this periodisover.
been journalists felt they Journal.
LOBBYING executive from John treasurer. increase He said that years he d heard silent.
of low pay,' Bailey argued.
tax.
What helped to persuade our the journalists on half a dozen local of Journalists. papers in London who had already taken to the picket lines, including my own, the Camden whose important.
A hundred of us lobbying the also helped concentrate their minds, and there was an unexpected speech receive t10 a Bailey, the NUJ he'd been meetings for years, endfor 1s the SAlIC arguments against a strike on the local and provincial papers SEBULOS It's time to end this scandal The minimum senior rate at Hopefully present is f60.92 a week, which elsewhere is all that many long-serving | journalists receive. The offer from the employers is 9 per cent. which amounts to £2-3 before Our concern now is to stop scab papers being brought out. The executive has instructed the Association to stop work, which woule freeze the coo marcoc into newspaper offices on the But editors can still bring out many papers single handed, and in a number of offices they can depend on scabs in the Institute Much will depend on support from the printworkers, which is why solidarity with the NGA members are affected at The Times Strike pay is a problem, and a lot of our time will be taken u fundraising. We might week from the COTH NUJ, but that's only if an interst-free loan can be obtained from another union.
COMMITTEE In London we wil be picketing the main printing centres, the and wholesalers and an action committee has been set up to build the strike.
this will be done Journalists often don't like 'outside interference on their pickets, even olner NUJ members, so we have to explain that we need all the help wecan get.
Journalists Charter has just produced a 4-page paper on the background to the strike, and meetings.
The emplovers, whose offer breaks the 5 per cent, want us to to say we're a special case. This is a load of rubbish. There are many others as appallingly paid It would be a very good idea if all those with claims against the 3 percent cowo genogerner on a basis co-ordinate propaganda Hackney Trades Council has committee such general shutdown in the press, it's worth considering the possibility of producing an alternative news paper to back all thestruggles.
Donations and offers of help to: Newspaper Society Action NUJ, 314 Gray's ComE lee Inn Road, London WCI. Tel 01-2787916
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amounting to 20-30 per cene. LUCRATIVE
FOR THE FIRST time in its history, the National Union of Journalists has called out on strike its 9,000 members working on provincial and local newspapers. The dispute, for a f20 increase, promises to leave much of Britain with only the national press — what's