Michelin Tyre workers OK four-year pay deal

BURNLEY, England (June 4)—Production and engineering workers at Michelin Tyre U.K. Ltd.'s tire plants in Ballymena, Northern Ireland; Burnley and Stoke, England; and Dundee, Scotland, have accepted a four-year pay deal designed to cut the company's wage bill by 10 percent and to safeguard jobs. The agreement involves a pay freeze this year, followed by a 1-percent increase in each of the next two years and a 4-percent rise in 2004, according to Mick Cambey, a negotiator for the Transport & General union. The deal also includes annual lump sum payments of $850 and changes in shift allowances to support new business, job creation and to discourage layoffs, he said. T&G members voted two-to-one in favor the deal. Management and union officials took more than eight months to hammer out the deal, which was greeted with "a sigh of relief," Cambey said. "Given the restructuring in the European tire industry, the workers saw the need for change, the question was how to get there," he said.