Steel tubes

Workers Press no. 905, 27 October 1972 · scan page 12

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result today A SECRET ballot among just over 1,000 Walsall tube workers will this morning give its verdict on a plan to speed up half their factory shut down the rest and send 300 out of the gates with a promise of first option on any future employment there.

The plan has emerged after lengthy negotiations between the Stainless Tubes factory's parent company, Tube Investments, union officials and the shop stewards' action committee set up to fight earlier plans for a total shutdown.

It was being put to a secret told Workers Alan Colpitts told Press yesterday, because voting at a mass meeting had been SO close the stewards could not get a clear decision.

'There was nothing else we could do, said Colpitts, a Communist Party member.

Of the 1,400 workers originally threatened with the dole, 190 have already left the factory have placed in bv and 278 have been offered alternative work.

Under the TI plan between 350 and 400 would be kept on and given a £4.50 a week pay increase in return for measured increases in productivity.