Cowley plant to vote today
28 March 1973
By R. W. Shakespeare
A mass meeting of workers at the huge British Leyland Austin-Morris car plant at Cowley, Oxford, will be voting today on whether or not to support a shop stewards' campaign to impose a complete ban on the use of industrial engineers by management to carry out work study schemes. The meeting called for yesterday broke up in confusion after shop stewards who had convened it, failed to appear. After waiting about more than an hour most of the men left the meeting and went home.
The Cowley car assembly lines and the body pressing workshops were again at a standstill with nearly 10,000 workers idle. The dispute began on Monday of last week when the management brought in the industrial engineers. British Leyland argues that by doing this it is simply carrying out an agreement to which the unions are parties.
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