British Ford long had some of the world's worst labor relations: its 65,000 employees in 22 competitive unions stopped work over everything from wages to tea breaks, averaged a strike a week and lost up to 1.5 million man-hours a year. Last week, after a period of improvement over the last two years, the wildcatting started up again. Two thousand men at Dagenham, the biggest of Ford's eight British plants, threatened not to work any more overtime because Ford, while granting an extra day's annual vacation, wanted to switch their holidays from July to August. The complaint seemed so paltry,...
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