Britain's recent record as the Europe's strike-free country lost a lot of its gloss yesterday when 5,000 aerospace workers at Shorts, Belfast, went on strike and 3,000 car workers at Peugeot's Ryton plant voted for an all-out stoppage from next month - the first break in production at both sites for 22 years.
Ryton's French owners expressed bafflement at the threat of a strike over their plans for the shortest working week in the British car industry.
But the growing militancy among manufacturing staff testified to the impact that skills shortages and low unemployment are having as unions grow more confident in pressing their demands and use Conservative legislation, enforcing secret ballots, to extract concessions.
The decision at Ryton, home of the best-selling Peugeot 206 and a model for industrial relations in union eyes, "shocked" management which had planned to introduce a French-style 35-hour week, or 36.75-hour week including breaks, under the plant's agreement on flexible working and had secured the official if wary backing of the two unions, the TGWU and AEEU.
Members of the AEEU, a proponent of strike-free deals which urged a no vote, were 339-270 in favour of a 24-hour stoppage on July 24 followed by an all-out strike from August 21. TGWU members voted 60-40 in favour of action.
"We're asking our employees to work fewer hours and they want to go on strike," bemused Peugeot officials said, urging the unions to reconsider. But the row centres on Peugeot's plan for a Friday night shift one week in two which would count as overtime and see assembly-line workers pocket £90 a night, a 17% pay increase.
Peugeot's French employees work their 35-hour week in five seven-hour shifts but at Ryton the firm wanted the staff to come in 3.8 days a week instead of 4. Weekend shifts, normally covering Friday, Saturday and Sunday, would spread over into Monday and entail 3.3 days instead of 3.
Tony Woodley, the TGWU's chief car negotiator, said union officials had warned a "greedy" Peugeot that the workers would object to compulsory overtime working on a Friday that was aimed at boosting output of the 206 from 168,000 units last year to nearer 200,000 this year. This would be on top of the agreed annualised hours.
Talks to resolve the dispute are likely next week, largely because union leaders believe the deal offers substantial benefits compared with the job-losses at Rover and Ford. These include the cut in the working week, the first at Ryton for 17 years, improved pay and conditions for 900 staff taken on two years ago and a commitment to introduce a new model, the 206 estate, to be built in Britain alone.
Mr Woodley said: "We have now given the company some time to review its position. If the company don't want to talk it will be an all-out strike; then they will want to talk."
A Peugeot spokesman said: "Obviously, we don't want to see this dispute coming off and we will do everything we can to find a way around it ... But it is very difficult to contemplate renegotiating something which has already been accepted by officials."
