Press
The expendables
Walter Plinge
I see that the Mirror suffered yet another of its industrial disputes last week so that a lot of Britain was without its flak ration of whatever it is people get from the paper. The cause of the dispute this time was not Sogat, or Natsopa, or the NGA playing silly buggers. It was the NUJ demanding parity with them.
Parity with the print unions? What on earth are Ken Morgan's lads thinking about? Let me quote you something from the UK Press Gazette of a week or two ago: Salaries over £10,000 a year should be frozen, said Derek Robinson, who was deputy chairman of the Pay Board until its abolition last July. There it was, as bold as the 'brass' it was talking about, s in the Daily Telegraph, headlined 'FREEZE URGED FOR £10,000 SALARIES'. Its absence from the Financial Times made us wonder. Could it be that someone had thought the story might be too distressing for the Lino-operators to tap out? After all, they are £10,000 a year men. Such delicatesse. Either the Telegraph is less sensitive or it doesn't pay its operators so much; we favour the latter.
So do I. But to get back To the quote, £10,000 is a lot of money for a Linotype operator. It is a figure far and away beyond what journalists earn. The Fleet Street minimum for a fully trained journalist is £3,200. Most people are above that — the Mirror is particularly good at paying high wages — but Ken Morgan, the general secretary of the NUJ, was telling me only the other day that he would guess that most of his members in Fleet Street were getting between £3,800 and £4,800. Which, I do not need to point out to you, is a long way short Of £10,000.
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