WORKERS at a Lancaster factory are in uproar over controversial new contracts issued to staff this week. Emergency meetings will decide today whether 105 Standfast employees, who are members of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), will boycott proposed compulsory overtime. If they do not go ahead with the overtime ban, union bosses say they will be advising their members to take the Caton Road company to court. The new annualised hours contracts, which came into effect on Monday, state that workers will be expected to work 48-hour weeks several times in the year. To compensate for the overtime they will sometimes work 32-hour shifts as well as the standard 40 hour shifts.

But many workers fear compulsory overtime will eat into their weekends and deprive them of quality time with their families.

Peter Reid, regional textile trade group secretary for the TGWU, described the new contracts as a major and significant change.

He told the Citizen: "The new package has been rejected by our members. We are now in the process of advising them and the company at the meetings tomorrow." Union bosses say there is a lot of bad feeling at the factory and many employees plan to reject the new work practises and sue the company for constructive dismissal.

Negotiations between the unions and management began last July and despite modifications to the contracts, union members rejected them. The printers and dyers business makes furnishing fabrics and is part of the multi-national company, Courtaulds Textiles.

Tony March, chief executive of Standfast, told the Citizen: "We are a service industry and rely on how quickly we can turn an order around. Demand goes through peaks and troughs and we want to change the hours of production to match the orders. The employees will work an annual contract with a specfied number of hours the same as it was before but in a more variable pattern. I believe that if we do not make these changes we will struggle during the next five years."

ACAS has also been involved in talks but have now pulled out.

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