ON SETTLEMENT TERMS

The Newsletter, vol. 3 no. 114, 22 August 1959 · scan page 4

Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.

CHAIRMAN WOULD NOT LET THEM VOTE MANCHESTER ‘printworkers are in revolt against the leaders’ settlement of the print strike.

A crowded general meeting of Manchester branch of the National Union of Printing, Bookbinding and Paper Workers ended in uproar last Friday when the chairman refused to accept a resolution rejecting the terms and advising members to vote against acceptance.

Although members were on their feet the chairman abruptly closed the meeting.

As printworkers thronged the pavement outside the Houldsworth Hall angry comments were heard.

“We were quite prepared’

‘If they had taken a vote the majority of the meeting would have rejected the terms’, one member told me.

Another added: ‘Before the dispute started the union rejected an offer of 42} hours and 2} per cent. Now after seven weeks they have settled for 42 hours and 43 per cent.

‘Seven weeks on strike for a mere half-hour and a couple of bob! Either the unions should have accepted the first offer or, having brought us out, stuck out for the full claim.’

‘They should have brought out the papers as well’, said his mate. ‘We were quite prepared to stay out.’

When I asked another member what he thought of the ‘whole thing he pointed to The Newsletter’s headline—‘The Print Strike Could Have Been Won’—saying: ‘That about ‘sums up what I think.’

Sixty-four copies of The Newsletter were sold at the meeting.

CONFUSION

to express optimism about the possibilities of jobs for the dismissed men. As if from a hat, he produced four jobs in Falmouth, Devon—which is by no means a bus ride from The recall meeting, after much discussion and a good deal of confusion, decided to ask the management to reinstate the shop steward and the committee men, yet not to take any action to force the decision.

The men also decided to pay the wages of the three victimized workers until the management relented.

The remainder of the sacked men were not considered, and no action to help them is to be taken.

Decisions like this will be greeted with satisfied smiles by a management which is obviously intent on strengthening its hold in a trade already much threatened by the growth of Action can still be taken to secure the reinstatement of the victimized men, and there is talk among the workers of a campaign to this end.

By Our Industrial Correspondent