Word: murdochized
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...also the beginning of the end for Fleet Street as the 200-year-old center of the British newspaper industry. Robert Maxwell, the mercurial publisher of the leftish Daily Mirror (circ. 3 million), plans to follow Murdoch to the east London docklands area by 1987. He has already persuaded the unions to allow him to lay off one-third of his company's 6,000 workers in exchange for severance benefits. The conservative Daily Telegraph (1.2 million), now controlled by Canadian Tycoon Conrad Black, hopes to finish its headquarters in east London by the fall. The liberal, thoughtful Guardian...
...Though Murdoch is leading Britain's newspaper revolution, Shah and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher created the climate for the rebellion. In the early 1980s, Thatcher's government passed two laws that severely clipped union powers. No longer could workers summon other unions to support a strike, nor did employees have to belong to a particular union in order to hold their jobs. Most important, the courts could levy heavy fines and freeze the assets of unions that flouted the new rules. Shah tested the laws in 1983, when several printers walked off their jobs at his plant in northern England...
...Murdoch needed little encouragement. Ever since the Australian-born publisher entered the London newspaper scene by purchasing the News of the World and the Sun in 1969, he has made no secret of his frustration with the unions' archaic practices and featherbedding. Over the years Fleet Street proprietors had yielded control of their print rooms to the unions, figuring that it was easier to grant another demand rather than endure a shutdown. Many printers work partial shifts but are paid a full week's wages; a few even receive two paychecks. Senior men can make up to $40,000, nearly...
...Commissions have concluded that the unions are largely responsible for Fleet Street's chronic money woes. Terminal may be a better adjective: on gross revenues of nearly $2 billion last year, Britain's 17 major papers made about $34 million in profits, nearly all of it accounted for by Murdoch's racy Sun, the country's largest daily (circ. 4.1 million...
...Murdoch began building his Wapping plant in 1980. The following year he opened negotiations with the unions on accepting computer technology and reducing staff. Among other things, he insisted on a legally binding contract, a novelty for the print unions (agreements with British employers are traditionally bound by "trust and honor"). However, as London newspaper owners well know, those pacts do not halt costly stoppages. Last year the Fleet Street papers lost nearly 96 million copies in union disputes...