Engineers and French to discuss Hoover deal

ENGINEERING union leaders are to meet their French counterparts tomorrow over a controversial deal for a Scottish plant which has prompted a diplomatic row between Britain and France.

Senior officials of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union yesterday defended a deal struck with Hoover for its Cambuslang plant, near Glasgow, which allegedly led to the closure of the company's complex at Dijon in France.

French politicians have accused Britain of 'social dumping', whereby French workers are being undercut by allegedly unscrupulous British union officials prepared to sign away workers' rights.

However, leaders of the AEEU said yesterday that they had 'nothing to be ashamed of' in the deal they are about to sign with the multinational and that it was part of the ebb and flow of jobs in which Britain had sometimes lost out in the past.

Hoover is creating 400 new jobs at its vacuum cleaner factory at Strathclyde and scrapping 700 jobs at Dijon. The 1,000-strong workforce in Glasgow has accepted pay cuts and new working practices to get the work.

Jimmy Airlie, of the AEEU, said: 'We are in the business of defending our members. The reduction in terms and conditions has been forced on us by the recession, which is the responsibility of the Government. The French should direct their criticism to the Government, not to other workers.'

John Weakley, of the AEEU executive, said that while they would 'listen carefully' to their French colleagues in the meeting, arranged under the auspices of the European Metalworkers' Federation, they would not be talking about the contents of the agreement. 'That's our business,' he said. The deal was agreed by the workers at Cambuslang.

Mr Weakley said that 10 years ago the union had unsuccessfully tried to save the Hoover plant at Perivale in west London and many of the jobs had been switched to the Continent.

The British union has agreed to forgo a pay rise this year and accept a lump sum payment of pounds 150 instead. In return for complete flexibility of working practices employees will also receive pounds 2,200. Night shift workers will lose about pounds 50 a week with a compensation payment of pounds 500. Workers will be expected to work a full 37 hour 10 minute week.

Even more controversial is the agreement that all new recruits working on the production line will be on a two-year contract only and will receive pounds 170 a week instead of about pounds 200. Under British law anyone dismissed before two years cannot claim unfair dismissal at an industrial tribunal.

Hoover has also applied for the refund of pounds 28m out of a pension surplus of more than pounds 60m. Management has secured a Japanese- style agreement for tight production procedures in which all workers are individually responsbile for the quality of their work.

Leaders of the AEEU insist that they will not agree to a 'no- strike' clause and that the deal is similar to agreements elsewhere in British industry.