In your article about the recent disputes in the printing industry IRed Weekly, 23 January), Mick Gosling asserted that the chaft conciousness of print workers Bood in the wey of mass redundancies and closures in newspaper offices. But in and thet this consciousness encouraged dutive campaigns, to fight for jobs at the epensa of 'oon-craft" unions like NATOPA ne tren wont on to insist nat ine spit in the ranks of the print unions -that. is, the lack of unity, mostiy due to the craft elitism of the NGA, its leading AAE D OVErEOIR SEER rTHOM ane to be defeated. Finally he ended by dundericies and closires in newspeper wis not through the maintenance eraft differentials fand presumably not i some readers found the logic of this ruther obecure, they must have telt lut confused when he reassured them that tratt consciousness yas contradic The NGA is an amalgam of aid craft et, some af which were among the (it trade unions to be organised - an ement which to a large excent resborton are becoming more polarised at the present Both are focusing attention directly on Parlament and ottespting to achieve changes in he law relating to abortion.
ted on printworkers being able to bergam on the besit of their special skills, as part of a small, highly privileged labour aristocracy, with a strategy of narrow sectional Seine Most of these 'super' skills have long the nest paragraph he more or tess admit- sirce been møde ousolere by mecnanical methods and automatic machinery, to craft unions like the NGA to conduct ex- the point where skills have been spread more arety wrouge ue inpusiry, waen craft and "non craft" unions absorbing skills of a broadly similar, less complex naturs, making the skills monopolised by one union no more or less important from the point of view of bergaining and industrial action than anty other.
Burtucrats and more backward member. has tended to degenerate into mart anob. in this situstion croft conscicusnees bery, an attitude that is guaranteed to provoke talse and damaging divisions be proclaiming that the way to fight any te tween the print uniona, that must delight Inter-union hostility based on craft and "non-craft" union membership will havo to be forgotten if unity is to be cre: ated to face the newspaper proprietors threats to replace the present hot metal procest with superior technological meth. ods. If these threats materialise in a prac tical way it would put craft and "noncaff' unions (manual work) on an equal fosting with the prospect of being retrained if they are lucky.
DEMONSTRATE AGAINST WHITE'S BILL for march to Parlament
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Friday 7 February-assemble 12.30pm, Lincoln's Inn Fields