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Vote for strike at Ford U.K.
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February 2, 2000: 7:48 a.m. ET
Thousands of white-collar workers dispute pay and pension scheme
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LONDON (CNNfn) - Thousands of white-collar staff at Ford Motor Co. in Britain voted Wednesday in favor of a strike over pay and pensions that could halt production at the auto giant's U.K. unit unless union members and managers reach agreement at talks set for next Monday.
A vote of members of the Manufacturing, Science and Finance union, which represents 4,000 salaried designers, computer operators, engineers and administrators, produced a 63 percent majority in favor of a strike after concluding they were getting a raw deal on pay and pensions compared with the company's manual workers.
A strike by the salaried staff would be a first for the union's members at Ford - and, on a broader scale, the first such action by any staff in the British car industry since the late 1980s. The vote was the latest episode of industrial unrest for the carmaker in the wake of allegations last year of racism at several of its plants and work stoppages at its Dagenham factory near London.
Ford employs 26,326 people across its U.K. operations, of which 19,000 are hourly paid employees. The white-collar staff who make up the remainder perform a variety of skilled tasks that keep the wheels of Ford's production lines greased and running.
The MSF chided Ford for allegedly downplaying the significance of its threat.
"Ford has made a serious mistake thinking our members were not serious about taking industrial action for equal pay and to save their pension fund," Terry Pye, the MSF's national secretary, said in a statement. "They are traditionally moderate but the company has treated them unfairly and they have shown their anger. Now Ford must think again."
Brian Harris, a spokesman for the MSF, said the crux of the union workers' grievance lay in a disparity between the pay-and-pension package offered to its workers and the agreement reached recently with the company's manual workers.
The MSF says Ford's offer to salaried staff of an 11.1 percent pay increase over three years is lower than what the company awarded to hourly-paid workers, in a deal agreed by the blue-collar staff union in November. According to the MSF, that earlier settlement amounted to a 15 percent raise over three years, although according to Ford, the hourly-paid workers got the same 11.1 percent increase it is offering to white-collar employees. MSF and Ford also disagree on whether the company is extending its offer to cut hourly-paid staff's work week to the salaried employees.
The professional union is also taking issue with Ford's proposal to merge the company's two existing pension funds. Harris said the professional staff fund has a surplus of 507 million pounds, which many union members fear could be used by the company to cover pay for manual staff or the cost of layoffs in the company. The manual-staff pension scheme has a deficit of just over 155 million pounds.
Harris would not predict the outcome of upcoming talks between the workers and management.
"We're always hopeful," he said. "The last thing we want to do is hold any form of action. But the beauty of the ballot is we can hold any action at all." Under British labor laws the union has 28 days after the Monday meeting to call a walkout.
A Ford spokeswoman declined to comment on the strike-action vote Wednesday.
"There's a meeting on Monday and we don't know what will happen at that meeting," she said. 
--from staff and wire reports
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