I should like to thank the employees who were not on duty today for giving up their spare time to attend this meeting. At the moment we have only one official shop steward and in view of the importance of my information, I thought it better that we meet as an entire factory. It’s for the same reason that I took the opportunity of briefing your district secretary Mr. Tom earlier this afternoon.

For the last few weeks the factory has been rife with rumours – rumours of take-overs, mergers, resignations, and even the complete closure of the Aberdeen unit. Whilst i was aware of these rumours, I was reluctant to call a meeting before we had firm information.

At the meetings held prior to, during and immediately following the strike, I repeatedly stressed the damage that was being done to our company. I emphasised again and again the twin dangers of customers loss of confidence and of pricing ourselves out of certain markets. We were facing increasing costs in raw material, machine spares, carriage, storage, packaging, power, rates, insurance, telephone and postage, plus the cost of a strike with a massive increase in wages. Yet, we knew that significant increases in our selling prices would result in loss of orders.

Towards the end of the strike we knew that certain business had been lost and we were afraid that this loss would increase when prices were adjusted. Redundancies would then be unavoidable.

We therefore suggested that the factory re-start on a five day working week, this providing a form of work sharing and giving time for discussion and negotiation with customers. This suggestion was totally rejected by your shop steward and by the strike committee. I made it clear at that time to the chairman of the discussions, Mr. Hughes, to your district secretary, Mr. Tom to the strike committee and to the engineering employers association that although we agreed to re-start on a full working week, this would in no way solve the problem, in fact it was likely to make it much more difficult to solve and to reduce our ability to cushion redundancies if these became inevitable.

Unfortunately, no one listened.

During these last few months your directors and executives have made tremendous efforts to secure forward contracts and have had a large measure of success with customers who buy mouldings in millions but virtually no success with customers buying hundreds or thousands of components. These customers are not prepared to pay the increase in price necessary to cover our increased costs. Loss of orders for these components has a profound effect on jobs because these are the mouldings that have provided a considerable amount of work load for toolroom, finishing, shift engineering, quality control and stores.

Some of this loss of business is already apparent in these departments and it must be fairly obvious to most of us that redundancies are now unavoidable. The redundancies now are envisaged are as follows:-

19 people in the toolroom, shift engineering and electrical departments.
15 people in quality control, warehouse, and general works
11 people in the finishing department.

No redundancies in machine operators or tool setters.

 

Over the last year we have effected considerable savings in staff and have reduced overheads by closing 2 area offices. Some further adjustment may be necessary. I wouldn’t wish to minimise the seriousness of these redundancies but don’t lets forget that two jobs are being saved for each job lost, nor have i any doubt that specialisation in mass production greatly increases the companies long term future.

I should like to repeat the promise which I gave at the end of the strike that we were prepared to discuss this question with your union officials. i would also assure you that all agreements on length of notice and redundancy my will be fully honoured.

I have had discussions with Mr. Cuthbertson, manager of the local department of employment and he assures me that local job prospects are good. I have agreed that the department of employment officials can visit the factory to facilitate job finding and we will also be prepared to discuss ways in which employees can be given time off to attend interviews.

To enable us to deal with this in a bit more detail, I suggest that we have four further meetings this afternoon. All of these meetings to take place in the board room with the following time-table.

Immediately following this meeting:-

Shift foreman
Lorna Beverley
David Samson
Leslie Mclaren
Mike Warrander
Doug Macpherson

At 3.15 p.m.
The Woolroom
Shift Engineers
Shift Electricians
Department And Maintenance Engineers

At 3.45 p.m.
Quality Control
Warehouse And Stores
General Workers

At 4.15 p.m.
Finishing.

Mr. Drummond will issue information sheets confirming these meetings.

I am sorry that this situation has arisen – that I was unable to convince you that this was the almost inevitable outcome of a prolonged strike with a high settlement. Redundancies are now unavoidable but we will still do our utmost to ensure that hardship is reduced to a minimum.

Source : Typed Notes ref Redundancy following Engineers Strike