Technological innovation and workplace reorganisation were achieved at the newspapers of News International in Britain in the mid-1980s only after a bitter and violent dispute between the company and newspaper trade unions, resulting in the establishment of a non-union workplace at Wapping in the Docklands of London. While not making use of the most recent technology, the shift in production technology from hot metal to computers at Wapping was the catalyst for overwhelming workplace reorganisation in the national newspaper industry in England. Soon after the Wapping dispute, News Limited in Australia commenced a major program of investment in technology and plant at its newspapers, including the Adelaide Advertiser. While these investments and accompanying processes of workplace reorganisation gave rise to some conflict between unions and management, and while the new production plant in Adelaide was even referred to for a period as ‘Wapping South’, the outcome in Adelaide has been a workplace where workers are still represented by unions, and where unions are still involved in negotiations with management over issues relating to technology and organisation of the workplace.

The Advertiser is the only daily newspaper in Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia, with a population of approximately one million people. Until 1987, the Advertiser newspaper was owned by the Advertiser Group which was formed in the early 1960s from diversification involving the Advertiser and other organisations into a group of companies in the printing and packaging industries. This diversification was accompanied by a reorientation by the management of the Advertiser ‘ away from an editorial perspective and towards greater concern with market development’ (Macintosh 1984:33).