Murdoch says strike looks inevitable

Press, 25 January 1986, Page 10

Murdoch says strike looks inevitable

NZPA-Reuter London British trade union officials were holding emergency talks yesterday to try to avert a strike over Fleet Street’s battle to introduce new technology. The head of the Trade Union Congress, Norman Willis, summoned union leaders to the talks after the owner of four national newspapers, Rupert Murdoch, said that a strike looked inevitable. Talks with print unions failed to solve a dispute over insistence by his group, News International, on no-strike agreements at a new printing plant in

East London, away from the traditional Fleet Street centre.

Heralding a shake-up of the British newspaper industry, Mr Murdoch seeks to switch to computerised publishing equipment and do away with old labourintensive machinery. Mr Murdoch, who owns Britain’s largest newspaper group including “The Times,” “The Sun,” “The Sunday Times" and “News of the World,” said he thought a strike was likely.

“I think the unions are determined to take me on,” he said. He said the Right-wing Electricians’ Union had agreed to run his new printing system and he would get some papers published even if his Fleet Street printers went on strike. Yesterday transport union representatives promised total solidarity with the print unions and said they sought urgent talks with T.U.C. committees about the distribution of Mr Murdoch’s newspapers in the event of a strike.

Mr Murdoch said he had arranged for a haulage firm in which he has an interest to distribute newspapers printed in East London. The British Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, yesterday praised Mr Murdoch, saying he was trying to get rid of restrictive practices that should have been out years ago. “He is also trying to protect the future of some of Britain’s most distinguished newspapers,” Mrs Thatcher said.