Back to Work at Leyland

The month-long wildcat walkout by 3,000 precision toolmakers at British Leyland, England's largest automaker and the only major one still under British control, shut down 15 factories, stopped production of all but six of the company's 18 car models, idled 44,000 assembly-line workers and threatened the troubled giant with near-total paralysis. Bowing to pressures from the government and their own union officials, the toolmakers voted last week to go back to their lathes. It was a significant reprieve for Britain's Labor government, which sorely needs worker support for Phase 3 of its nationwide voluntary wage-control program, due to begin Aug. 1.

The strike story was a sequence of Through the Looking-Glass ironies. The government, which took over Leyland almost two years ago to save it from bankruptcy and now owns 95% of its stock, threatened to cut off promised investment funds if management could not end the walkout. Militant Laborite Hugh Scanlon, president of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, which represents the toolmakers, joined Leyland's labor relations boss Pat Lowry to endorse a strikebreaking ultimatum: go back on the job by Monday or get the sack. With reverse English, Tory politicians and press threw their weight behind the strikers. "Union bosses must act for their members, not the government," wrote Tory Employment Spokesman James Prior in the Times.

The toolmakers, a craftsmanly elite among auto workers, earn an average $110 a week. The pay is higher than for most assembly-line laborers, but the differential has eroded under 20 months of Phase 1 and Phase 2 government wage control. As a small minority in the A.U.E.W., the toolmakers resent the union leadership and want to negotiate with Leyland directly. Skilled workers elsewhere rallied to their support. Some 400 Rolls-Royce toolmakers staged a one-day sympathy strike.

As the Leyland strike wore on, however, all sides backed away from a showdown. The toolmakers' unofficial strike committee, meeting in a Birmingham pub called Good Companions, decided they would ask the strikers for a vote to end the walkout--provided that Leyland and the A.u.E.W. would agree to two conditions: 1) Leyland must publicly withdraw its threat to fire strikers, 2) the strike leaders must be promised a meeting with Leyland and A.U.E.W. executives to air their gripes. The probable agenda for that meeting: standardizing toolmakers' pay in all Leyland plants and restoring the pay differentials, presumably as part of any Phase 3 government program.

Leyland agreed, and won the grudging acceptance of Scanlon. Then Strike Leader Roy Frazer stood before the toolmakers and defended the proposal. "This is not the end of the road--just the beginning," he declared. By a nearly unanimous vote, the Birmingham strikers decided to go back to work.

Pay Policy. Leyland's--and the government's--problems are far from over. Restoring pay differentials in British industry would introduce a severe complication in negotiations for Phase 3. The strike has sharpened union resentment against the pay policy. Joe Gormley, chief of the Mineworkers' Union, which brought down the Heath government three years ago, says "there is not a cat-in-hell's chance" that the miners will vote for voluntary curbs.

As for Leyland, its losses during the strike ran $17 million to $25 million a week, adding to the $43 million in red ink generated by the company's auto-manufacturing division last year. Leyland still earns money from bus and truck production, and from its special-products division. In fact, it has just announced earnings of $120 million for the 15-month period ending in December. The strike losses will all but wipe out these profits, however. That jeopardizes future loans from the government, which are essential to provide the $425 million that Leyland needs to make a new version of its low-priced Mini. As of now, Leyland will need all its skill, resources and bulldog British grit to keep turning out its present line of Austins, Triumphs, Rovers and Jaguars.

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