GAT off the
Socialist Organiser1984 1984-01-26Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 16 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 16
THE confrontation between the print union SOGAT and Tory anti-union law went off the boil last Wednesday, 18th, when the BBC and Robert Maxwell's print firm ВРСС announced that they would call off their contempt of court proceedings against the union.
But it could heat up again this week when the BBC tries to get the Radio Times distributed in London.
SOGAT has been enforcing a trade union boycott on this distribution. The BBC has got a £10 from Brent supporters.
donations.
214 Sickert Court, London N1 2SY. court order instructing the union to lift the boycott, and the SOGAT executive has agreed to comply. But London SOGAT members are still stopping distribution.
The contempt of court proceedings last week were to be about that, and about the refusal of SOGAT to allow BPCC plants outside London to scab by printing extra copies of the Radio Times to cover the 600,000 otherwise done at the the disputebound Park Royal works in West London. Another court injunction has told SOGAT: scab -or elsel Proceedings were dropped because the BBC had found another printer, Hunter Peterlee and Corby.
SOGAT has failed to instruct its members at Hunter Print to refuse this job. But the BBC still faces the problem of getting the copies from Hunter Print distributed.
The original dispute is over pay, conditions and jobs at Park Royal - where the electricity substation is still occupied. Now Maxwell says he will not reopen Park Royal.
The issue, as in other battles over the anti-union laws, is whether trade union solidarity will continue or be banished by the Tories.