PRINTING DISPUTE

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28938, 4 July 1959, Page 13

PRINTING DISPUTE

T.U.C. Peace Plan (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, July 8. Peace in the printing and ink disputes, which threaten to stop publication of British national newspapers after the week-end. hangs in the balance today. Trades Union Congress intervention yesterday produced a tentative plan aimed at eventual settlement, but there was no guarantee of its immediate mutual acceptance, said the “Daily Telegraph.” The British press is currently hit by two parallel disputes stemming from union demands for more pay and a shorter working week. These are: (M 'A two-week-old stoppage in 1100 provincial newspaper offices and more than 4000 printing firms involving nearly 200,000 workers, and (2) A strike by 2500 members of one union employed by print- ,,. ink firms will Stop publication of the major London .dailies and Sunday newspapers after next Sunday. The T.U.C., which represents more than 8.000,000 British workers, intervened in the printing dispute on Wednesday after an unsuccessful bid by the Ministry of Labour on Tuesday to bring the two sides together.

T.U.C, chiefs are concerned at the spread of the stoppage, which menaces the jobs of thousands of workers outside the dispute, including journalists, engineers, electricians, paper-mill workers and transport men. Drastically reduced in size, national newspapers this morning were generally disturbed and unable to predict a way out of the dispute which threatens the biggest press shut-down since the 1926 general strike. The “Daily Mirror’s" commentator “Cassandra” said: “It seems that nothing can stop us from closing down and the melancholy strife that has engulfed the whole printing industry will do what Hitler’s bombers were never successful in achieving: shut our lively trap."

West Germans Warned Employers had warned the West German Printers' Union that any refusal to work on British printing orders would make them liable to pay damages, the American Associated Press said in a report .from Cologne. The union called on members last month to display their solidarity with striking \ British

printers by refusing to work on contracts shifted to Germany from Britain. The West German Employers* Association countered last night with a statement describing such "sympathy strikes” as illegal.