WE ARE writing to you about the bitter industrial dispute currently taking place between 270 production workers and the management of Frenchowned multinational car components plant Montupet.
The Montupet plant opened here in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland, amid considerable fanfare in 1989, attracted the outskirts of the West Belfast unemployment blackspot by the lure of large government subsidies.
The government-financed Industrial Development Board is believed to have provided the Montupet project with around £140 million.
Today the company is locked in an abrasive conflict with its workforce. The seeds of the dispute lie in a pay claim lodged last November for an approximate 4 per cent pay rise. When this was refused by the management, the workers balloted for limited industrial action.
Work to rule
By March the overwhelming majority of the production workers were supporting a general work to rule and occasional half day strikes. On 13 April two fitters were suspended for refusing to service machines taken over by supervisors who were breaching the terms of the work to rule. The next day the workforce walked out and began their all out action.
Management reacted to the strike action by demanding that the union (AEEU) make it clear to the workers that their strike action was wholly illegal. The Union officials immediately disowned the strikers - on the grounds that a secret postal ballot of the workforce had not been taken to authorise increased strike action.
The strikers ignored the directive from the union because the union had already fouled up in its attempt to stay within the law over the first ballot. The company used changes in its staff to say that the first ballot was null and void.
The AEEU told the strikers to return to work and promised a properly run ballot in three or four weeks time. The strikers voted to stay out because they had so little respect for the word of the AEEU official involved. A week into the strike, the same senior union official led 17 scab workers through the picket line.
Beckoning scabs
He went well beyond keeping the union on the side of the law when he made an unambiguous gesture of support for the Montupet company by standing shoulder to shoulder with the senior plant manager at the factory gate, and beckoned scabs to come forward, all in full view of the incensed strikers.
The following morning the Union issued a public statement disassociating itself from the strikers. The strikers reciprocated by tearing up their union cards. After a mass meeting the vast majority of the 270 workforce decided to continue with the strike.
On 22 April, Montupet sent out a letter offering a two year pay the original company offer that the strikers had long since rejected. The letter reminded the strikers that their dispute was illegal and that the company had the legal right to sack the entire collection of strikers. To reinforce its threat, on the very morning that the offer was made, the company sacked 20 strikers and told them they would never get their jobs back.
Hurriedly, the local SDLP MP, Joe Hendron, who had lobbied for the plant to be brought to Dunmurry, stepped in to try and bring the two sides together. a meeting was set up at the Labour Relation Association to which the strikers sent their representatives. The meeting was to be chaired the professional negotiators of the LRA.
The Montupet management never turned up to the meeting. While the strikers' delegates sat twiddling their thumbs at the LRA, the Montupet lawyers were busy issuing 26 writs against the strike leaders. The company lodged a legal suit alleging £4 million in damages against the strike leaders and obtained an injunction preventing 26 workers from approaching the picket line.
Joe Hendron felt humiliated by the Montupet management and accused them of an "outrageous" breach of faith with him.
On Thursday 8 May, the strikers were told that they were being given one final chance to return to work or face the sack. About 30 workers took fright and went back to work the next morning but the majority refused to be intimidated.
New deal That afternoon, the AEEU announced that it had agreed a new pay deal with the company on behalf of the scab workers and made another call for the strikers to return to work. The workers refused to abandon the 20 sacked workers despite the coaxing of the union.
It was then discovered how the Montupet company was managing to stay in reduced production. It was secretly using a skeleton crew from one or other of its European plants, probably from France but maybe from Spain.
The company shows no inclination to reinstate the sacked workers and in fact is threatening to replace the entire workforce. It is recruiting a new workforce through a private agency.
The company is proceeding with its court action. On 15 May it issued a public statement boasting that seven strike leaders who the company said have infringed the court injunction would be in prison by next week.
Although the strikers are up against it, they are sticking by their sacked comrades. They realise the company is out to break them. They feel bitterly betrayed by the AEEU and have all sworn to have nothing to do with the union ever again.
The strikers are receiving no union strike pay and are in need of donations. But what they also need is contacts with and solidarity from the workers in other Montupet plants and solidarity from workers generally. * Rush messages and cheques, payable to Montupet Strike Committee, to Jeff McClay, 41 Queens Rd, Parkhall, Antrim, BT41 IAL.