How to Avoid Redundancy Payments

The scan: The Week v4 no17.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive, opens at this page)

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from a Middlesex reader 600 men came out on strike at the Hizh Duty Alloys factory in Slough in another dispute involving the Redundancy Payments Act. The company, which is part of the Hawker Siddeley Group, gave redundancy notices to 71 men and stated: "Reduction of the labour force is necessary to increase efficiency and the standard of productivity and quality and, therefore, competitiveness." Many employees, however, took the view that it was acting precipitately to avoid giving severance pay under the Redundancy Payments Act which comes into force on December 6th. Mr. David McCartney, divisional organiser of the Amalgamated Union of Foundry Workers, said he was not attributing this motive to the company, but added: "We can get our men back to work as soon as the management gets back on the procedural rails". The strikers, members of seven unions, complain that when the two sides registered failure to agree on the issue of redundancies, the management started issuing notices instead of re-starting negotiations.