Vauxhall offers to cut hours in radical three-year pay deal

Union leaders yesterday hailed an important breakthrough in their battle to cut working time in British industry when Vauxhall agreed to a one-hour weekly reduction.

The motor company has proposed a 38-hour-week as part of a three-year deal. Leaders of the company's 9,000 manual employees have agreed in return to a commitment to work 48 hours' overtime a year to make up for the cut.

Unions representing 2 million workers in the engineering industry who are campaigning for a 37-hour working week will be encouraged by the Vauxhall deal, which will be recommended in a ballot of the car firm's Luton and Ellesmere Port plants due in the new year. In the first year of the proposed deal production staff will get a 4 per cent rise or pounds 12.25, whichever is greater. In the succeeding two years their pay rise will match inflation.