A simmering dispute between the GPMU's national hierarchy and its chapel at Chromoworks has delayed Polestar's decision on the future of its Nottingham plant.

The group will reveal its plans on Monday (3 December), but it was forced to delay the announcement it had scheduled for 26 November (PrintWeek, 23 November) so that a final ballot of union members could take place.

However, the chapel is still unhappy about ballot procedures and deputy Father of the Chapel Martin Quinn was seeing lawyers yesterday (29 November) in the hope that the chapel could force the GPMU Central Midlands branch to use independent adjudicators. The final deadline for the ballot is noon today.

The Chromoworks chapel has also sent a statement to PrintWeek, which Quinn said was an open letter to the industry.

It warns "all workers within the British printing industry" to "beware of the Trojan Horse of the GPMU" and said that at the national level the union was a "parasitic bureaucracy whose primary consideration is self-preservation".

The chapel also sent a letter to GPMU general secretary Tony Dubbins, deputy general secretary Tony Burke and Central Midlands branch secretary Bernard Rutter, alleging they were using a "divide and conquer" tactic to turn the membership against its elected chapel officials.

"All the decisions made at the chapel meetings were agreed upon by the full chapel, in the face of redundancies and massive cuts in their terms and conditions," it said.

"The failure of the [Central Midlands] branch to accept the chapel's voting decision at the last chapel meetinghas been met with total disgust by the chapel."

Story by Gordon Carson