Dunlop Stoppage Hits BMC

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
BIRMINGHAM, MARCH 11

The strike of 500 workers at the Dunlop factory at Coventry will cost the British Motor Corporation nearly £500,000 a day later this week.

The strikers decided today to continue their 10-day-old stoppage over the dismissal of two shop stewards, and not to meet again until Friday. A B.M.C. official announced tonight that by Wednesday afternoon all production of the corporation's Mini-cars in Birmingham and at Oxford would stop. The 1,200 workers at the Oxford factory making Morris and MG 1100 models, who have been laid off since last Thursday because of the Coventry dispute, would resume work tomorrow, but it would be possible to find them work for only a few hours after which, like the several thousand workers engaged on Mini production, they would be idle until the strike ended.

The Dunlop factory makes suspension units, and besides the laying-off of the B.M.C. workers themselves there are likely to be further effects among supplying factories.  Today 500 men were idle at Pressed Steel Works at Oxford and Swindon.