A one-day strike over plans to cut the working week to continental levels and increase overtime pay yesterday halted production at Peugeot's Ryton plant near Coventry - prompting a flurry of talks to head off an all-out dispute that would cost the French car group £6.5m a day.
Two shifts among 2,500 workers staged the 24-hour stoppage, with the third shift due to walk out on Sunday, after a ballot produced a 50.6% to 49.4% majority (of just 31 people) for an indefinite stoppage to begin on August 21 after a three-week factory shut-down. Turnout was 89%.
Negotiations resume on Monday but company executives and union leaders held emergency talks to avert a dispute seen by industry insiders as crazy and "unbelievable given the parlous state of the UK car industry."
Professor Garel Rhys, motor industry expert at Cardiff university's business school, labelled the strike and the threatened all-out action one of Britain's first industrial disputes over "lifestyle" rather than the traditional row over pay after the workers went on strike over enforced Friday night working.
Union sources said the dispute centred on Peugeot's plan for a compulsory shift one Friday night in three, and to increase the weekend shift from 29 to 36.75 hours, taking in a Monday morning.
The car group had made a series of concessions after an earlier ballot, on a smaller turnout, produced a majority for strike action over its plans to cut the working week from 39 to 36.75 hours (including breaks) to bring Ryton into line with French plants.
But a second ballot still endorsed the strikes even though union leaders had approved a package that included a 17% pay increase for the Friday night shift, plus a flat-rate extra £6 to bring total payment to nearly £100, and limited overtime paid at 1.5 times the basic rate.
"They seem hell-bent on a strike," one union official said, pointing to the continuing uncertainty at the nearby Longbridge plant of Rover, the planned closure of Ford's Dagenham plant and the threat to take the new Nissan Micra from Sunderland to France as reasons against action.
Peugeot rejected Prof Rhys' claim that it had failed to communicate the rationale behind the new work patterns, saying it had held a series of focus groups and "stopped the track" to explain the importance of them.
