CRYING OUT FOR REFORM
Paul Johnson argues
that the Government needs more law to break the closed shop
Street managements are still being led by the nose it is their own fault. On the other hand, the Government's trade unions re- forms are clearly incomplete in one essen- tial respect, which make it much more difficult for Fleet Street managements to throw off the union shackles. In general, the Government's approach has been to reform the civil law, providing redress in the courts and leaving it to individuals to seek it. It believes the state should keep out of disputes between workers and man- agements, if at all possible. The approach is consistent with the overall political and economic philosophy of Thatcherism. But it leaves unremedied that great social evil, the closed shop. Under the new code, the closed shop can be rejected by the particu- lar workers subjected to it, but the law still does not recognise that the closed shop is an evil in itself, affecting the public as a whole. In my view it will persist unless and until it is made a criminal activity, forcing the state, as opposed to the individual employer, to prosecute anyone who oper- ates one.
Why is the closed shop a general evil, as well as a particular one to those directly affected by it? It is evil because it is a form of monopoly achieved by coercion and it has all the anti-social consequences of any other monopoly. When monopoly legisla- tion was first framed, both here and in other countries such as the United States, labour was specifically excluded from its provisions. Unions were then still weak and still for the most part in possession of their pristine haloes. To have included labour monopolies in the general concept of a monopoly would have inhibited the growth of the unions, which in those days was felt necessary to counterbalance the enormous power of big business. So both THE GOVERNMENT recently hinted that it regards its task of reforming the unions as largely completed and that it plans no further measures, at least in this Parliament. Lord Young, the new Employ- ment Secretary, is said to be not much interested in the subject. All this is bad news for Fleet Street. It is true that one chief reason why the power of the unions continues to be so great in the national newspaper industry is that the newspaper bosses are too disunited as a group, and too cowardly as individuals, to take full advantage of legislation the Thatcher gov- ernment has already made available. They have several times funked a showdown when unions behaved unlawfully under the new code and, even when they have gone to the courts and won verdicts, they have been too frightened to carry their victories to the point where delinquent unions were forced to disgorge their funds to pay for the damage they had inflicted by lawless ac- tions.
Indeed it is worth pointing out that one reason why Eddie Shah is already re- spected and feared in Fleet Street before he has put a single copy of a national newspaper on sale is that he is the only owner to take full and fearless advantage of the Thatcher laws. That is the real basis of the power he has created for himself. The unions have learned by bitter and costly experience that, as sure as night follows day, he will sue the hides off them the second they commit an unlawful act, and will not be deterred by threats, picket- ing or Rentamob riots. If Shah had not created this reputation for himself, no one would be taking his proposed new paper seriously.
In many ways, then, Mrs Thatcher and her colleagues can fairly claim that if Fleet the philosophy and case-law of public proceedings against monopolies grew accustomed to excluding labour.
In the 1980s the position is wholly different and in all other respects the public powers have long since recognised that union power needs to be curbed. Yet union monopolies remain entirely outside the scope of the law. In Britain, thanks to the prevalence of the closed shop and the ferocity with which it is maintained and even extended, they are undoubtedly the most widespread and vicious form of monopoly and the one which most clearly operates against the public interest. Moreover, in the Fleet Street printing industry they assume a uniquely evil form. It is not generally known that in Fleet Street the managements do not usually hire, let alone fire, their print workers. All this is done by the unions. As a rule, managements share in the conspiracy to keep the astonishing fact secret, because they are ashamed of the degree to which they have forfeited control. But Rupert Murdoch, in his recent outspoken com- plaint against the abuse of union power in Fleet Street, admitted the abdication: 'We are allowed neither to hire nor fire them' (night-shift workers).
Now what this means is that the union is a supplier to Fleet Street in exactly the same way that other organisations supply ink, paper or machinery, or Fleet Street firms themselves supply newspapers to the public. The only difference is that the union's supply of labour is an absolute monopoly, wholly outside the purview of the Monopolies Commission and un- touched by any legislation whatever. The result of this unchallenged monopoly is entirely predictable: the commodity labour - is about four or five times as expensive as it would be if competition prevailed, and the purchaser is obliged to employ it, at the dictation of the monopoly supplier, in all kinds of wasteful ways, and under constant threat that this sole supply will be withdrawn. These costs are all passed on to the public, which in addition has a much smaller choice of end-products - newspapers - than it would have if the monopoly were ended. In short, a classic monopoly situation, shrieking for reform.
If it is true that Lord Young is not interested in union reform and his depart- ment - always reluctant to tackle the unions - has no further legislation to offer, then I suggest that Leon Brittan and his new department, Trade and Industry, take up the cause. Mr Brittan is a clever fellow, a sharp lawyer, and no coward either. It would not take a massive Bill to extend the principle of monopoly to the supply of labour in cases where unions not only represent labour but provide it as well. Such a provision would force the Fleet Street unions either to abandon their monopoly or to relinquish their usurped role as a supplier of labour. Either way, Fleet Street, the cause of journalism, the public and, not least, Mr Brittan's reputa- tion would benefit.
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