Peace formula

The dispute which has halted production of the mini Metro at BL's Longbridge plant could be over today. Talks between the managemeht and the works committee last night produced a peace, formula (the Press Association writes). Details of the settlement were not Available but union leaders will urge the workers to accept.

Fifteen hundred workers were laid off yesterday and hundreds more stayed away or staged. sit-ins in protest at the use of an outside contractor to break a strike by Metro seat assembly workers. Discontent which had been rumbling among the 130 seat assemblers on the day shift for weeks ended in a strike on Thursday. On Friday the management stopped the Metro assembly line and laid off 500 workers. Tempers flared and groups of men rampaged through the plant.

The company claimed that a few seat assemblers were refusing to work properly so that the day shift was achieving only 80 per cent of its target output compared with the night shift's 98 per cent. It said the disparity between shifts with identical manning made nonsense of the day shift's claim that it required more workers.