Press
Done with Mirror
Bill Grundy
"That way madness lies." 1 do not know if that quotation from King Lear is carved in stone over the doorway of a certain office block in Nightingale Lane SW12, but if it isn't it ought to be. For the offices in question are those of the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades, a printing union known more cosily as Sogat, at present engaged in a remarkably uncosy dispute with the Mirror Group of Newspapers.
If I were Mr William Keys, the general secretary of Sogat, I should go at once to an optician. Because anybody who cannot see that the dispute with the Mirror group, if prolonged, will lead to the loss of a lot of jobs is clearly well in line for a white walking stick.
The facts of any industrial dispute are always hard to come by, and even harder to state fairly, since both sides have their own version and tend to believe it with a faith that makes Fundamentalists look like Doubting Thomases. But, in all humility, and at the risk of being lynched, here are some facts to be going on with. The Mirror Group have offered Sogat a 10 per cent rise backdated to October 1, and a further 71/2 per cent from April 1, which the more discerning of you will have noticed is All Fools' Day. Sogat have refused the offer because it its tied up with proposals for a reduction in manning (for 'manning' read `over-manning').
Now, as everybody knows, even including members of Sogat, overmanning is still rife in Fleet Street. Everybody also knows that, if the industry is to survive, many things have got to be done, and a reduction in staff levels is one of them. The Mirror Group is well aware of this and recently negotiated a 171/2 per cent agreement with the National Graphical Association in which a reduction in manning is made possible by the relatively painless method of not automati cally replacing staff who leave Note the words 'not automatically,' Not the most tyrannical of phrases, eh? But it is precisely this phrase which is sticking in Sogat's gullet. They want the same sort of agreement they have negotiated with the other nationals — one without any reference to manning.
Well, it is precisely because the other nationals are capable of doing stupid things like that that the Mirror Group pulled out of the 'Newspaper Publishers' Association. They wanted a free hand to deal with industrial relations in whatever way seemed right to them, not to have to go along with a group of men whose behaviour on past occasions has been so spineless it made the jellyfish look like a vertebrate. They were nearly hoist by their own petard just a couple of months ago when they found themselves engaged single-handed in a dispute with Richard Briginshaw's union, Natsopa, on the same issue. That cost them, if I remember right, some 22 million copies, which is something not even a body as big as IPC newspapers can laugh off.
Times are hard in the industry, as I am getting tired of telling you. And this present dispute has already cost more millions of copies. So Mr Percy Roberts, deputy chairman and chief executive of the group, has decided to take a stand. He has sacked all the Sogat members employed in the group's London warehouse. He has also sent out 'protective' notices of dismissal to all of the Mirror's 9,000 employees, right up to director level. Well, that's what the recipients will think they. are. They are not. For the word 'protective' does. not appear in the notices. These are for real. The Mirror is prepared for a show-down even to the point of shut-down.
Mr Roberts's letter to the staff says, "The company is at a crossroads. It can go forward or be irreparably damaged. What is agreed by the Board is that we will not sit back and let the company bleed to death." Now it so happens that I believe that Mr Roberts is in earnest, because of something he said to me a while ago. But Mr Keys of Sogat is in earnest too. He has said he will attend no further meetings until his members are reinstated, and so there won't be any Daily Mirror until that happens, and no Sunday Mirror, or Sunday People, and no Sporting Life and not even a Reveille (and how are you going to bear that particular loss?). I apologise for that last flippancy: Reveille may not be my sort of paper, nor yours, but it employs about 700 people, and if Mr Roberts's prophecy that it may never appear again is correct, those poor devils are going to be out of work. Indeed, the entire Mirror staff may also be out of work, for Mr Roberts has said that none of the group's papers will be published again until an understanding has been reached "which will permit the company to operate successfully in the future."
So where do we go from here? Search me. I never could work out the one about irresistible forces and immovable objects. But if I were Mr Keys I would sit down quietly. somewhere, take a long hard look at the industry as a whole, and then I should ring up Mr Roberts and even dare to introduce the word 'manning' into the conversation. But I'm not Mr Keys, so I'm just keeping my fingers crossed. And, for good measure, my toes as well.
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