Longbridge stewards resist MD W plan

SHOP stewards at British-Leyland's AustinMorris factory, Longbridge, Birmingham, yesterday condemned management tactics in going over their heads with a Measure d-Day Work pay offer.

Departmental meetings last Friday carried the stewards' recommendation to reject the offer, which holds out guaranteed earnings of up to £50.25 by November 1974.

• The meetings also rejected the idea of further talks on MDW. On Monday, full-time union officials persuaded the stewards to withdraw this ban. But it was reimposed the following day by senior stewards on the workers committee.

In an obvious bid to undermine the stewards' authority, Leyland hurriedly prepared a detailed statement on its offer which went out to individual workers on Wednesday.

The immediate rises, the statement said, would be between £6 and £7 a week for men and for women. Men would receive a further £1.30 in November, women fl.

MDW would meal: a new guaranteed male rate of £44.20 a week, rising over the next 28 months to £50.25, the statement went on. Women would get £35.35 rising to £45.25.

Also included is an offer of £l.10 a week to certain grades skilled workers and a guarantee of lay-off pay at 80 per cent of the new rates for up to 12 days a year when work is disrupted by disputes outside Leyland's car division.

What the statement does not say, of course, is that for many pieceworkers the offer in fact represents a considerable cut in earnings. Moreover it does not describe the kind of productivity increases which Leyland would hope to exact under MDW.

Speaking after a meeting of the Leyland combine stewards' executive in Birmingham, Eddie McGarry, joint chairman, summed up the stewards' attitude to the new system:

'We believe that British-Leyland is trying to take away the authority of the shop stewards' he said.

"This policy will go the same way the Industrial