FINNISH paper workers belonging to the Paperiliitto union at multinational UPM returned to work on April 23 after 112 days of strike action — the longest in the country’s history.
Workers walked out after UPM attempted to undermine national pay bargaining and union rights within the company.
The union’s 2,200 members took all-out strike action and resisted UPM’ s strike-breaking activities with 24-hour picketing, which received strong support from print and paper unions internationally including Unite, Workers Uniting and IndustriALL Global Union.
Forty years on, TONY DUBBINS revisits the Wapping dispute to argue that Murdoch’s real aim was union-busting – enabled by Thatcherite laws, police violence, compliant unions and a complicit media
Enduring myths blame print unions for their own destruction – but TONY BURKE argues that the Wapping dispute was a calculated assault by Murdoch on organised labour, which reshaped Britain’s media landscape and casts a long shadow over trade union rights today
It is only trade union power at work that will materially improve the lot of working people as a class but without sector-wide collective bargaining and a right to take sympathetic strike action, we are hamstrung in the fight to tilt back the balance of power, argues ADRIAN WEIR



