FOR THE first time in 18 years a proportion of the Sun and News of the World will be printed by unionised labour. This follows a great victory by print workers in the GPMU union at Newsfax International in east London, who have won trade union recognition.
It is the result of a four-year struggle with the employers, who also print editions of the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. If Newsfax International had refused to accept an agreement by last Friday we were going to organise a ballot for union recognition. They accepted the agreement.
Union members in the workplace have driven the fight for recognition throughout. Our victory will be a boost to print workers in small firms nationally. The publishing firm DC Thomson is a majority shareholder in Newsfax International. It hasn’t recognised a union since the General Strike of 1926!
Now we have recognition the stone is rolling. We have members in the print and the pre-press but we are not organised in the offices. We now hope to unionise the whole plant.
Simon Baker, father of the GPMU chapel at Newsfax International
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