5000 Idle After Token Strike

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
OXFORD, APRIL 26

Five thousand workers were sent home and production was halted at Morris Motors today after an unofficial token strike by 600 inspectors who rejected the advice of a senior trade union official not to take unconstitutional action. At a meeting outside the Cowley factory, Mr Roger Horner, assistant southern divisional organizer of the Amalgamated Engineering Union. unsuccessfully appealed to the men to follow the agreed disputes procedure.

Mr. Rupert Werrett, senior A.E.U. shop steward at Morris Motors. called for a resolution from. the meeting and a suggestion that the inspectors should stop work at 2 p.m. and return tomorrow morning was carried overwhelmingly. The inspectors are asking that their wages should be more closely allied to those of the piece workers in the factory which would give them an immediate increase of 4d. an hour.

It is understood that the management are prepared to reintroduce a scheme which formerly operated at Morris Motors, and which the inspectors asked to be withdrawn, which would give them this increase with retrospective payment to January. But the men are not prepared to accept this scheme which would give them a variable rate, as opposed to a fixed hourly rate.

A dispute at the British Motor Corporation body-building factory of Fisher and Ludlow Ltd., Birmingham, which slightly affected car production on Monday, has been settled, a corporation spokesman said yesterday.

Work at Nuffield Metal Products returned to normal yesterday morning.