NUFFIELD MEN FIGHT FOR LIVING WAGE
By Harry Finch
1959The NewsletterHarry Finch Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
FourtH strike in a fortnight at Nuffield Metal Products, Birmingham, has brought the whole factory to a standstill.
The 500 crane drivers and other day workers who downed tools after four months of negotiations for an increase of sixpence an hour are paid an average of £9 10s. a week.
‘We will not return to work until the management make us a firm offer or agree to negotiate a raise for all our strikers’, Bro. J. Farrington, assistant Transport and General Workers’ Union convener, told me.
‘We went through the negotiating machinery right up to local conference, but they threw out our demand, although we proved conclusively that other British Motor Corporation firms were paying their day workers much higher wages.’
Bros. Johnstone and Fennel said: ‘We are only fighting a battle of justice for a decent living wage.’ Another striker said the charge-hands had just been given 15s. a week more —‘and we have as much right to our raise’.