Lakhasly

On a grey and overcast Saturday in late January 1995 a crowd of some
500 people assembled at Tower Hill underground station near the
River Thames in London. The people in the crowd milled about,
talking, greeting friends, reading pamphlets and trying to keep warm,
while some distributed and held banners representing labour organi-
sations including the Graphical, Paper and Media Union (GPMU), and
the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), while others represented
political parties. Suddenly, those with banners were called to the front
by yellow and orange bibbed marshals, announcements were shouted,
and people began to march. The march proceeded along the street
with police - some on horseback - ensuring that no one spilled over
onto the median strip. After an initial period of quiet, chants filled the
air. People shouted and responded 'Rupert Murdoch, hear us shout!
You can't keep the unions out!', 'What do we want? Union rights! When
do we want them? Now!', 'Major! Major! Major! Out! Out! Out!'. The
march wound along the streets of London until the destination was in
sight - the buildings of the media organisation News International at
Wapping in the Docklands area of London. As the people passed these
buildings the chants grew louder, and the passion and anger of those
involved in the march was evident. Numerous police and security
guards protected the entrance to the Wapping site to ward off any
attempts to enter the heavily fenced premises. The people marched
past the building, staring at it and at the people inside, and headed
towards a small park across the street from the buildings owned by
News International. At the park some people huddled under umbrellas
in the falling drizzle and others collected money, while trade unionists,
workers in the newspaper industry and politicians gave short speeches
to the assembled gathering. One worker recounted her story of how
2 NEWS CORPORATION, TECHNOLOGY AND THE WORKPLACE
she had been sacked recendy by the company for trying to organise
with co-workers a request for more ergonomically sound equipment.
Another speaker, the General Secretary of the NUJ, argued diat
aldiough not officially recognised within die plant at News Interna-
tional, unions were still a presence, and would not surrender to die
attempts of die company to remove all trace of them. The cheers were
loud, and diere was a sense of defiant optimism.
To die casual observer, diis march may have appeared as simply
anodier labour demonstration. Placed within its historical context,
however, die march assumes much greater significance. Nine years
previously, on 26 January 1986, 5,500 employees of News International
had been dismissed as die company undertook a process of workplace
restructuring that was to result in a dispute which lasted for more dian
twelve mondis. News International relocated from die traditional site
of national newspaper production in Britain in Fleet Street to a new
site at Wapping, in a move diat was soon to be followed by other major
British newspapers.
That dispute in 1986, its origins and its outcomes, which are die focal
concerns of diis study, subsequendy altered not only workplace and
industrial relations in the newspaper industry, but also influenced die
organisation of workplace relations throughout British industry. It was
a dispute ostensibly involving only die introduction of technology into
die newspaper facilities of News International, but it raised funda-
mental questions about workplace power, such as: who is to control
technological innovation in die workplace? How is technology to be
introduced? Who is to benefit from die introduction of technology?
How are events in die workplace influenced by institutions and rela-
tions in die broader society? It is diese broader questions about die
relations between technological innovation and workplace reorganisa-
tion diat I examine in diis study.
News International is, however, just one part of die global media
corporation, News Corporation. It soon became apparent diat die
effects of Wapping were to be experienced not only in Britain, but in
odier countries where News Corporation had interests, most notably in
Australia and die United States. In die mid to late 1980s, News Limited
in Australia began an expansive program of technological innovation
across all of its newspapers in cities including Adelaide, Sydney,
Melbourne and Brisbane. It was in Adelaide diat Rupert Murdoch, die
Chief Executive of News Corporation, began his media career widi die
now defunct Adelaide News. The program of innovation in Australia
involved die introduction of computer-based technologies and also
relocation of production work as had occurred in London. Throughout
diis process of technological innovation and workplace reorganisation,
INTRODUCTION 3
the shadow of Wapping was never far away. Workers and management
at the News Corporation-owned Adelaide Advertiser, for example, talked
of their new production facility as 'Wapping South'. At the same time,
technologically-related workplace reorganisation was carried out at the
Advertiser without the mass sackings or the twelve-month dispute of
Wapping. A further question that this study addresses is why was the
relationship between technological innovation and workplace reorgan-
isation different at the Advertiser to that at the Wapping site of News
International?
News America Publishing, the United States subsidiary of News
Corporation, was also to be affected by Wapping. In his Walter Wriston
lecture in New York in 1989, Rupert Murdoch proclaimed that with the
establishment of a non-union workplace at Wapping, the New York
newspaper unions were now the most difficult in the world (Murdoch
1989a). Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, newspapers owned
by News America including the New York Post and the Boston Herald were
to be involved in conflicts and disputes over the relative workplace
influence of management and unions, often related to technological
questions. As part of the comparative analysis of this study, I will
explore to what extent the relationship between new technology and
workplace reorganisation was different in the US newspaper holdings
of News Corporation to that of Wapping.
While a number of theoretical positions have been developed to
examine the relations between the introduction of new technology and
workplace reorganisation, I will build on these previous frameworks to
generate a model which I have labelled the 'relational model'. The
model states that control over the introduction of new technology into
the workplace, and the influence that this has on workplace relations,
is dependent on the prevailing balance of power between trade unions
and workers, management and employers, and the state. Further, this
balance of power can be understood only by considering the institu-
tional, political, social and economic contexts in which the actors are
situated. It is this model that I use to examine the complexity of factors
that have influenced the relationship between the introduction of tech-
nology and workplace reorganisation at the newspaper sites of News
Corporation in Britain, Australia and the United States