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Company threat backfires CHRYSLER STRIKERS at Coventry will not return to work until the company withdraws a threat to stop investment.

This was shop stewards' reply yesterday to letters sent out by Gilbert Hunt, managing director and chief executive of the US-owned car firm, slamming the 'appalling industrial record' of the strikebound Ryton plant.

The stewards' attitude hardened SLODDed men vers nonen pay, docking some men up to £30.

Hunt, whose letters went out on Wednesday, had demanded the ending of the present dispute over arbitrary layoffs and a virtual no-strike regime in the factory in future.

Otherwise, he said, he would neither recommend nor approve further capital investment Chrysler's British plants, which employ 25,000 workers at Coventry, Linwood, Luton, Dunstable and Maidstone. This would stop a £10m expansion programme the company claims would provide 1,000 more jobs.

The 4,500 strikers yesterday defied this threat which follows the pattern of the draconian pronouncements made by Henry Ford II during the 1971 strike at his factories.

Their picket lines remained unbroken and Ken Walton, Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers' convenor, declared: 'We are always prepared to talk, but we're not going back until our demands are met and Hunt's threat is withdrawn.' Mr Walton, who was named in the National Industrial Relations Court during non-unionist Joseph Langston's unsuccessful bid to break the closed shop at Ryton, linked, Chrysler's provocative attitude with a general drive against the shop floor by employers in the Coventry area.

Chrysler workers' anger with Hunt, and with allegations of substandard workmanship from American plant manager James Caton, reached boiling point when they discovered they were not being given any bank holiday pay.

One striker said it was 'dirty trick' and others asked if this was the way to find industrial peace at the plant, where 1:3003 PART OF THIS WEEK'S MASS the entire 4,500 labour force is on strike.

Ken Walton told Workers Press: 'Even our officials tell us there's a tightening-up' by employers in the area as a whole. I don't think you would be far out if you were to say there's a concerted attack by the employers in the Coventry district.

'Just look at it. At GEC, toolmakers have been out for ll weeks. Then there's MasseyFerguson-that's on the boil and likely to blow soon. BSA workers are facing redundancies, and at GEC Rugby, there are allegations that the company are using young girls to break a strike.' At Ryton, the strike started after 600 body-in-white KET AT THE RYTON PLANT were refused payment for a 90minute layoff.

The factory had only recently restarted production following a layoff because of a dispute at Linwood, near Glasgow, which makes body panels for Ryton and Chrysler's other Coventry plant, at Stoke.

Workers believe that they were recalled only because the company did not want to pay them their guaranteed week's earnings, which it would have been obliged to do had the layoff continued. sufficient supply of good-quality They say there panels to keep production going, and that substandard panels were used. One picket yesterday claimed he had handled a panel actually marked 'Rejected'.

Under the Measured-Day Work system operating in the factory £100,000 BUILDING FUND FROM yesterday's we received £44.10, wh brought our total £48,545.69.

East Lond on £1.60; Southwark £3; Hull £4; Paddington £2; Tooting £6; Crawley £20; Tottenham Press Staff £4; Swansea £1 We need £1,454.31 by first post next Monday June 11, to complete the first £50,000. It means action, action all the way.

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Party Building Fund 186a Clapham High Street London SW4 7UG there is no possibility of line workers, who have to meet production targets to earn their pay, arguing with management over quality.

But after claiming that the level of acceptable bodies had fallen to as low as one-third of scheduled production, the plant management shut down the track and tried to blame the Ryton workers. It was on these grounds that payment for the 90 minutes was refused.

When the body-in-white workers stopped work over management's attitude the rest of the labour force walked out, showing the same solidarit y as they did against Langston's challenge to union organization iome months ago.

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