He follows up his excellent rundown of the British Motor Holdings and British Leyland stories with a seventeen-part study of the firm from to At a meeting of the men on strike from the Cowley plant on 8 October , it was decided by a majority of three votes to continue the stoppage and meet again on Wednesday 14 October.
You are asked to decide at once to end the industrial action you are taking and report for work. In the event that you do not report by Monday, you will be considered to have repudiated your contract of employment and your employment will be terminated. The strike, which had stopped production of the new Triumph Acclaim car for over a week, collapsed suddenly the next day.
Only of the men on strike at the Cowley plant attended a meeting. They voted by two to one to return to work on Monday 12 October, the deadline set by the company. The letter sent by John Forster had had its effect. This intervention produced a flurry of activity by Trade Union officials and Shop Stewards. The ill-will and resentment that is building up on the shop floor will explode in their face at some time in the future. Their claim for lay-off pay for the day when a staff shortage caused them to be sent home would now be pursued through the agreed disputes procedure.
This meant that the dispute had only been suspended. If we pay more, we prejudice the Plan, and we dare not provide the cash by cutting the model programme. It is obvious that we must improve earnings mainly out of productivity. I agree with your conclusions and I agree with your strategy.
But we need one further thing. I know that this will be seen as provocative, as a crude threat. Therefore, we owe it to all our employees to get the fact on the table now, before their attitudes harden. They must be told that their jobs and the business are at stake. BL Cars announced on 12 October that nearly more jobs were to go with the closure in of three motor and component manufacturing plants.
