Two Strikes Over At Car Factories

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
BIRMINGHAM. JUNE 19

Two strikes at car factories in the Birmingham area were called off today and the men involved agreed to return to work on Monday. The two factories are those of Nuffield Metal Products and the Rover Motor Company.

The 600 crane drivers, slingers transport workers, and storekeepers at the British Motor Corporation factory of Nuffield Metal Products, whose strike over a claim for an improved basic rate had made 4,000 other B.M.C. workers idle, agreed to go back after union officials had told them that negotiations could then start with the management.

At the Rover Motor Company's factory at Solihull, 250 men went on strike over a pay dispute. The stoppage has been holding up production of the Land-Rover since Tuesday. Only two sections engaged on Land-Rover production were working today and a number of men were laid off, but a management spokesman said that all the men would be back at work on Monday.

DISPUTE OVER HOLIDAY CLAIM SETTLED
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
OXFORD, JUNE 19

The 300 draughtsmen at the Pressed Steel Company's factory at Cowley, who have been on strike for seven weeks over a holiday claim, are to return to work on Monday. They unanimously decided today to accept an offer from the management that workers should be entitled to three weeks' holiday after five years' service from the age of 18.

On this day, 20th June 1959, Jaguar Chairman Sir William Lyons chaired a meeting with Union officials Chater, Lapworth and Gallagher about a dispute involving inspectors and final line workers. Lyons stated; "My purpose in meeting you today is to register in the strongest possible way my disappointment and perturbation at the action that has been taken by your members in ceasing work on this issue. Press statements have been made suggesting this claim has been outstanding since November, implying that nothing has been done. You must know, as I do, that this is so far from the truth as to be almost libellous."

THE GUARDIAN

Three stoppages of work in the car industry , ended yesterday. The men affected were : 600 at the British Motor Corporation's factory of Nuffield Metal Products in Birmingham ; 117 at the Triumph Herald body shop of Standard Motors, Coventry ; and 250 at the Land-Rover factory. Solihull, near Birmingham. A fourth dispute, of 80 tool setters at Morris Commercial Cars. Birmingham, continued.