Word: wappinger
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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On Gray's Inn Road in London, just north of Fleet Street, the modern office buildings that once housed the Times and the Sunday Times are nearly abandoned, their lobbies dark and locked. One mile away, in a seedy dock area called Wapping, deep in the shadow of the Tower...
The target of their wrath is Keith Rupert Murdoch, 54, the proprietor of Wapping and one of the world's most powerful press barons. Murdoch has acted audaciously in the past, but never before has he accomplished so much in a single bold stroke. For 50 years Fleet Street's...
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...
The printers not only balked at a legal 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...
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...