Word: murdochized
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...contract but continued to resist the new technology. The old plants, for example, featured a button for stopping presses. The Wapping compound has no such device, but the union insisted that three men should be hired to supervise an imaginary button anyway. When talks broke down in late 1984, Murdoch secretly began laying plans to operate Wapping without the printers. The publisher's New York office contacted Atex, a leading U.S. manufacturer of newspaper computers, and ordered a $10 million system. The equipment was shipped in unmarked boxes to London, where a dozen U.S. specialists assembled the setup...
Meanwhile, Murdoch announced plans to print a new afternoon daily at Wapping, called the London Post, and began hiring 500 members of the electricians' union to run the plant. Though officials at News International, Murdoch's British company, insist that the paper is still a possibility, the Post scheme appears to have been a diversionary tactic...
Negotiations resumed in late 1985, but little progress was made between Murdoch and Brenda Dean, the head of the largest print union. In mid-January Murdoch inaugurated the Wapping plant by producing a special Sunday Times section (it hailed itself as "a landmark in British newspaper publishing"). Furious at this calculated taunt, the printers struck Murdoch's papers on Fleet Street, fully expecting to bring the proprietor to his knees...
They failed. Murdoch promptly fired the 6,000 strikers and within 24 hours moved his papers to Wapping. He persuaded virtually all of his 700 journalists to join him by offering them free private medical insurance and raises of $2,800 a year. He hired a trucking firm to deliver the papers. When the strikers tried to discourage fellow union members from distributing the papers, the courts fined them a total of $70,000 and seized the assets of Dean's group. News International officials claim that 90% of the papers' usual press run is being met, though union leaders...
...estimated that Murdoch will save $84 million a year by printing his papers at Wapping. News International officials are willing to discuss severance benefits with the strikers, but they insist that the printers' unions will never represent employees at Wapping. At the moment, the fired workers are in no mood to cease their noisy protests outside the plant. Says Dean: "Our members feel very strongly that the company acted deceitfully, pretending it was seeking negotiations when in fact it was setting up secret arrangements to ensure they were kept...