T.U.C. finds electricians guilty of helping Rupert Murdoch

Press, 7 February 1986, Page 6

T.U.C. finds electricians guilty of helping Rupert Murdoch

NZPA-AP London Leaders of Britain’s labour federation found the electricians’ union guilty yesterday of recruiting employees to help Rupert Murdoch produce his four British papers without 5000 striking production workers.

The general council of the 9.8-million-member Trades Union Congress decided on the guilty verdict after meeting for 10 hours.

It must now decide what action, if any, to take against the electricians. It could order the union to halt certain

activities by a specific date. Failure to comply could lead to suspension from the T.U.C. and possibly eventual expulsion. If that happened, the electricians have talked of setting up a rival labour federation, including miners who defied the National Union of Mineworkers to work during a year-long coal strike.

The Australian-born multimillionaire has moved the printing of four titles, including “The Times” and “The Sun,” to Wapping and sacked 5000 production workers who went on strike against the move from Fleet Street,

the capital’s traditional newspaper row. Electricians have since been accused by the printing unions of poaching their jobs. Eric Hammond, the electricians’ leader, told the T.U.C. that the Fleet Street job losses were because of “incompetent leadership” by the printing unions, the National Graphical Association, and Sogat 82.

He denied that his union had a part in any plot by Mr Murdoch to provoke the production workers into strike action so that the publisher could sack them.

Mr Hammond said that the Murdoch newspapers were being produced at Wapping by 700 members of the National Union of Journalists, and the estimated 500 production workers there included about 180 electricians and members from the N.G.A., Sogat 82 and the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, the third production union on strike in Fleet Street. He said the newspapers were being trucked from the Wapping plant by about 700 drivers who belonged to the Transport and General Workers Union.

There had been widespread speculation that Mr Murdoch was planning to switch to Wapping, Mr Hammond told the T.U.C. “So why, with suspicion running rife, did they (the strikers) walk into this trap?” he asked.

Mr Hammond said some unions saw the possible expulsion of the electricians from the T.U.C. as a “golden opportunity” to poach his members. Some leaders of other unions wanted the T.U.C. to rid itself of his union regardless of its answers to the charges from the striking unions, he said.