A NATIONAL strategy is what is lacking in the five-week-old strike of provincial journalists, say militants who have learned with considerable disappointment of the concessions being offered by their union leaders.
The demand for across-the-board £20 increase Bas brought unprecedented anity and determination from the provincial journalists, whose local representatives reported at a meeting last week that morale remains high But the Newspaper Society, the employers' organisation, has shown no sign of improving latest 13.5 per offer, and in their anxiety to get around the negotiating table the National Union Journalists executive has said it would reduce pickets to a token mumber if the bosses agree to talk.
Although over a hundred local newspapers have been stopped, printworkers continue follow the instructions of their union leaders to mormally.
Picketing therefore plays a role, and successes last week. Botched TEED important A mass picket at Leamington on Thursday, on which 40 or so local trade unionists joined 20 journalists, persuaded pristworkers halt Courier Press newspapers.
The same result was achieved Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 6 by a mass picket of the Surrey South VOTION Group. by Newspaper Society's negotiator. embers thas members grown,' Howard Hannah, chairperson of the NUJ's North London branch, which brought several papers to a halt before strike was made official.
"We're now looking
mobile mass picketing. which could spread Leamington through the Hannah adds.
His branch was one of the first to condemn the suggestion cent ог а геоисвоп го oken picKets.
taking the view that this could only confuse both journalists of and printworkers while allowWing essential supplies to SOCIOC.
Over £300 has been donated to the North London branch's strike fund as a result of a visit to an industrial estate. It is by seeking this kind of support to from other workers against the Government's pay policy, not work by concessions to the employers, that the journalists strike can be won. we are faced problem of having no effective day-to-day leadership strike,' says Howard Hannah. *Various chapels have been pushing for a national action NGA committee elected from the the rank and file to be in charge of sub-committees.' the Chie NGA the to a squad experience Midlands, be To find out where help is needed on a picket near you, ring the NUJ on 01-278 7916. PICKETS stop a delivery van at the Uxbridge plant of the giant Westminster Press newspaper group. for matched by their determination to contest claims for injuries received doing it.
One driver is still paying legal costs to BOC - a judge threw out his case after his leg was broken and calf muscle ripped out by a gas bottle which broke loose from an old lorry monstrously bad winter condi tions. They 'proved" liability by test driving a brand new lorry over the same route in June!
John Walsh has now been suspended and reinstated by industrial action three times in five years. Management once again trying to hit back at the militant Hackney depot for the role it played in waging the fights for higher pay in the last two years.
They hope to open the door riding roughshod over safety agreements, tearing up union procedures, and victimising the leading union militants in BOC however, are out solidly for the The Hackney workers ANDREW implementation of all safety regulations, the reinstatement