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February 19th 1982

Leyland strike ends in uproar

By Edward Townsend, Industrial Correspondent

Strikers at the Leyland truck factory in Lancashire are to return to work on Monday after a confused mass meeting yesterday at which the works convener at one stage declared the vote to be overwhelmingly in favour of continuing the stoppage.
The meeting ended in uproar when Mr Michael Coyne, the convener, announced the result. Many of the 7,500 strikers surged towards the Platform, claiming Mr Coyne ad misjudged the vote. He was booed and jeered for more than 30 minutes and some workers alleged that he had tried to force the company to close. Mr Coyne conceded afterwards that his verdict may have been 'a little exaggerated" and his decision was later reversed with an announcement that the vote was in favour of ending the strike. The final interpretation of the vote was welcomed by BL last night. It had said that continuance of the strike, over planned redundancies and restructuring of the commercial vehicle operation, would close the factories. Workers at the Bathgate plant in West Lothian, Scotland, are to meet today. As they went on strike in support of their Leyland colleagues, it is thought they might also vote to return to work. The BL board was standing by for an emergency meeting today and was expected to announce closures and possibly liquidation of the Leyland group if the strike votes went against the company's plans. Meanwhile, 1,500 strikers at the Chorley plant in Lancashire and 1,750 white collar staff have also agreed to resume work next week.
BL said that given a return to work vote at Bathgate
"all of us at Leyland Vehicles must press ahead without delay with the task of winning back lost customers ".
The mass meetings came after the breakdown of talks between the management and unions earlier this week, when the company rejected an alternative strategy which, it said, would cost £600m to implement over the next five years. Leyland has been losing £2m a week in recent months, largely because of a drop in demand for heavy trucks.

July 21st 1982

Leyland Vehicles goes into the red after profits

By Clifford Webb,
Motoring Correspondent

BL, the state-controlled car group, blames government economic policies and a strong oil-supported pound for the rapid deterioration in the fortunes of its once prosperous Leyland Vehicles.
In two years the truck and bus subsidiary has gone from regular profits to £74m losses. The full effect of government policies was revealed yesterday by Mr Jim Mason, Product engineering director of Leyland Trucks at a technology seminar at Leyland's Lancashire head- quarters. He said:
"In addition to the declining level of demand for trucks in the United Kingdom market, the United Kingdom based manufacturers have suffered a 50 per cent worsening in international cost competitiveness since 1977. This is the result of the impact of the Government's economic policies and accelerating North Sea oil revenues on the international value of sterling combined with intrinsically higher rates of inflation in the United Kingdom."
He said this had put pressure on all the United Kingdom manufacturers margins and had resulted in loss of market share not only in Britain but in many traditional export markets as well. The effect had been to cut United Kingdom truck and bus production by 50 per cent between 1975 and 1981. He forecast that against a background of excess capacity chasing too few sales only a limited number of full-scale truck manufacturers would survive. In Europe only two groups, Daimler-Benz and Iveco, the Fiat-dominated grouping, had the 100,000 units a year volume necessary to support both a full product range and a high level of integrated manufacturing of components. Many truck makers were seeking safety in joint ventures and mergers. To date, Leyland Vehicles had remained isolated from this industry regrouping but it was now pressing ahead with collaborative deals on major component manufacturing. He did not rule out co-operation with Japanese manufacturers but only on components.
Leyland Vehicles is expected to announce shortly an agreement with the American-owned Cummins Corporation for joint production of a new family of diesel engines. This has led to renewed speculation that Leyland will phase out production of its own engines. But it will not be going empty-handed into engine collaboration deals. Mr Ian Williamson, chief engineer, advanced technology, said work under way at Leyland was aimed at the diesel engine of the future, the so- called adiabatic diesel model.

August 13th 1982

BL to cut more Bathgate jobs

The British Leyland truck Factory in Bathgate, Lothian, which has announced 300 redundancies this month and next, said yesterday that a further total of about 200 workers would have to go before the end of the year. That would bring to 1,565 the number of redundancies in 1982.

taken from:- http://www.aronline.co.uk/forum/view...p?f=48&t=13675

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