Around 180 press manufacturing staff held union-sanctioned strike action on Thursday and Friday last week, as well as an unofficial day of action on Monday this week after they discovered that a member of management had used a press testing rig during their absence. However, all had returned to work on Tuesday.

GGS director of marketing David Stamp said: They have returned to work after the unofficial action and we plan to have further discussions. We are keen for them to understand the cold economics of the of the situation and how it affects the industry.

Stamp added that GGS had made a fresh pay offer for 2004 and that its management was available to talk with staff at any time.

But there is further action planned for this Friday (12 December) when 171 technical, managerial and clerical staff will walk out unless agreement is reached. All the staff engaged in industrial action are members of the manufacturing and engineering union Amicus.

Amicus regional officer with responsibility for GGS Ron Ralph said that the dispute stemmed from a 2% pay rise offered to workers in January this year, which was then withdrawn.

They [GGSs management] argued that there wasnt a lot of work in the factory, which is when the shop floor workers balloted for an overtime ban. Since then more work has appeared in the factory, it has been much busier, said Ralph.

He defended Mondays strike, which, he claimed, was made after the deliberately provocative action by the plants management.

Around 85-90% of the workforce are backing the action. We are available to talk, if not more action will follow, said Ralph.

l Goss International has been awarded 6.12m in damages by a US court from TKS, which was found to have dumped printing presses in the country. Goss International reached an out of court settlement with Mitsubishi, KBA and MAN Roland earlier this year.

Story by John Davies