Ford announces foundry closure

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Ford has also announced the closure of its assembly plant in Ireland. FORD announced on Monday January 16 that it plans to close its Thames Foundry plant at Dagenham, Essex. This will involve the loss of 2,000 jobs over a 15-month period ending in April 1985.

This is despite the fact that the workforce has been cooperaing with management since 1980 on a radical survival plan' that has seen jobs halved from 4000 in 1979 to the present level. The workers have also accepted more flexible working practices.

The closure will leave Ford with only one other iron foundry in Europe - the one at Leamington, Warwickshire, which makes small, specialised, petrol engine components.

Meetings are to be held all 24 Ford plants, and union officials will recommend blacking of imported engine parts to pressurise management to reconsider their plan.

However, shop stewards from the Dagenham complex are due to meet on Sunday 22ad, and are reported as being likely to discuss pressing for a 24 hour strike as part of a fight to save jobs by industrial action.

The unions also have fears about 1986, when work for a replacement petrol engine will have to begin. They think that production may be moved to Cologne in West Germany, 494.4?

which would mean further job losses. About half the 3,500 jobs at the Dagenham engine plant would go. THE COURT injunctions against SOGAT and the NUJ revealed something of the scope of the Tory anti-union laws.

The Park Royal (West London) plant which normally prints part of each week's run of the Radio Times is shut over a pay and conditions dispute, and owner Robert Maxwell has threatened to close it permanently. The print union SOGAT told members elsewhere not to print extra to make up for Park Royal, and put a boyThe NUJ emergency committee, with full powers over disputes between meetings of the NEC, met and with only two votes against voted to capitulate. By withdrawing official support from the Richmond chapel, they in effect overturned the union's longstanding policy of refusing to allow the courts to dictate the conduct of disputes.

They also dealt a potentially lethal blow at the small and isolated Dimbleby chapel, which was suddenly denied strike pay and other support, and left on its own to uphold the union's national policy of boycotting T. Bailey Foreman.

It is a tribute to the tenacity of the strikers that they have held firm despite this top-level betrayal, and that there is still a dispute for the NUJ to take forward after. next weekend.

The strikers are in urgent need of financial support, which should be sent to Roger Hailey, 202 Vicarage Farm Road, Heston, Middlesex.