BOC workers fight back with work sharing demand

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from a scan of a newspaper page, and the page was cut into articles by machine, at the headlines found by their type size. Nothing has been corrected: expect misread words, text from a neighbouring article, and titles that are the machine reading of the headline, some of them only fragments. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: headline found by type size in the OCR geometry (split_tabloid.py); 3-7 of 7; machine-segmented newspaper page; uncorrected Vision OCR.

page 5 of the scan

AFTER Hackney depot was no longer viable and demanding 26 redundancies, British Oxygen bosses management have •come clean massive new investment in the depot plus another 10 redundancies!

Management want to increase productivity by reducing workforce "Inrougnpul or cylders rom te depol.

All talk of the market for their products in the area collapsing has cone out of the window with the announcement of a £2m plus investment pro. gramme which will mean that every inder in the depot's stock of 22,000 bottles will be replaced at a cost of roughly f100 per cylinder. In THE much maintaining that their and announced increasing De saved, publicised Labour addition management want the loss of eight drivers" and two testers' jobs.

This is just a part of the proposed national 'slimline' that BOC want to push through. But they nave lo crack ine hackney nul berore lej can implement the plan.

The BOC workforce however is 100 per cent firm in its opposition to the redundancies and has worked out a detailed plan to defend jobs.

Their response to management is simple. Ever ing an average of eight hours overtime on top of the basic 40 hour week was signed. nave consistent demandcd averari hours overtime a week. The stewards at Hackney propose cutting overtime and introducing a basic 35-hour week immediately. This, coupled with a smak reducion in tne ionnage outpul or gas would mean that all the jobs at the depot would changes, then they did try to block any agreements.

off addition to their previous offer negotiating verage of 20 As we go to response be nackne workes backeu De Additional measures include a demand for early retirement and a new national agreement to end formal provision for negotiating redundancy Management have responded by offering an extra £3000 per worker for every job lost as a oneWhile the full-timer from the Transport and porating these terms as a permanent basis for redundancies convenor John press the results of nationa negotiations are not known. But if any redundan cits are entorceo al tne eno or te yo-day wallng period (which expires on 28 September) then the strike Dy BOC an overtime bar throughout the rest of the combine.