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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 20. 29th August 1973

The boot goes in at 'The Dom'

The boot goes in at 'The Dom'

The management of Independent Newspapers Limited, owners of "The Dominion", has unilaterally "settled" at industrial dispute with 86 journalists on the paper by sacking the lot. [unclear: N]INL's announcement on Monday right that the journalists would be dismissed on September 29 followed several months of negotiations with the Journalists' Union after the company decided on July 2 to repudiate an eight year old agreement that gave all "Dominion" journalists a 7½% margin above award rates for working on the "Sunday Times". The INL managemnet said that the [unclear: di]smissed journalists would be immediately offered reemployment at a[unclear: re]ward rates only.

On Friday the President of the New Zealand Journalists' Association, Mr [unclear: R].C. Fox, and the President of the Wellington Journalists' Union, Mr R. C. Anderson, described the company as threat to sack the journalists as nothing short of industrial blackmail".

The union's response to the company's repudiation of the agreement was to seek a civil action to test the legality of the agreement in court. In their statement Fox and Anderson pointed out that this was "a mode[unclear: r]ate policy", and that the journalists had not disrupted production through strike action.

The company's refusal to negotis[unclear: g]e further with its employees, except on its own terms, is one of the most [unclear: c]aring examples recently of employe arrogance. Its decision to fire all the journalistic staff on "The Dominion" can be interpreted in two different ways.

Either the INL management is so determined to win an industrial dispute with its employees that it is prepared to lose all "The Dominion" journalists, or the dismissals are the first move in a plan to "rationalise" INL's newspaper interests.

In Salient March 14 we speculated that some members of the INL Board were planning to merge "The Dominion" and the "Evening Post". We said the costs of such a move would be firstly that a lot of "Dominion" staff would lose their jobs, and secondly that "even fewer people would determine the information we receive in the dailies at present".

The Managing Director of INL, Mr J. A. Burnet, has strenuously denied that the company is planning such moves. But as Fox and Anderson put it: "Something must be behind the insistence on forcing a fight (with the journalists), and consequently, the future of 'The Dominion', the 'Sunday Times', the 'Sports Post' and the 'Sunday News' must be in doubt".

Drawing "I manipulate therefore I am"

As this issue of Salient goes to press we do not know what action the dismissed "Dominion" journalists plan to take. But it is quite clear that all INL's employees, whether they are members of the Journalists' Union or the Printers' Union, must take united action to prevent the company trampling on their rights as workers.

Earlier this year Burnet and his colleagues told the Prime Minister that they did not intend to close down "The Dominion" (Rolling Stone, April 12). In the light of INL's latest moves Mr Kirk should ask the company again just what it's up to.

But even if the dismissal of the 86 journalists is just a "big stick" policy on the part of the INL management, it has disturbing implications for the troubled state of industrial relations in New Zealand. If INL gets away with settling a dispute by sacking all its employees involved, other employers will simply follow its lead.

Cabinet Ministers and Labour backbenchers have frequently said that the Government's industrial relations policy depends on negotiations and a reasonable attitude on the part of all those involved in industrial disputes. If the Labour Government means what its says it must step in to protect the interests of workers on "The Dominion".