Word: dagenham
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...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, especially in view of two recent wage increases, that labor experts...
Britain's organized labor has its own set of cobwebs. The archaic trade-union structure, a bewildering complex of 623 unions, is involved in continual controversy over jurisdiction. One firm may have to deal-as does Ford of Dagenham-with as many as 21 different unions within one plant. Still, the lack of notice, severance pay and worker retraining has made British labor among the least protected in all Western countries and often moved workers to resist whatever changes are attempted. This situation encourages overemployment -one of Britain's main labor problems -makes it more difficult and expensive...
Busy Signal. Meanwhile, other insiders were flooding London's legal bookmakers with bets on the winning dogs. The bookies, who pay track odds, frantically tried to lay off some of the money at Dagenham itself. But the telephone circuits serving the tote at the track were blocked and busy for a crucial ten minutes before race time...
Noisy Protest. London's Daily Express claimed that Operation Sandpaper had been masterminded by "a retired army officer, now a Midlands businessman," and said the team that had tied up Dagenham's betting windows numbered 170 men. The coup had taken three months to prepare, and the bankroll was ?6,000 ($16,800)-"?4,000 for betting, ?2,000 for expenses...
...bookmakers labeled the Dagenham caper a "builder play," and have occasionally taken a licking from the same technique. The most notable builder play took place in 1932 at Agua Caliente race track in Mexico. Staged by West Coast Gamblers Baron Long and Harry Fink, it boosted the odds on a horse called Linden Tree from a logical 7 to 10 to almost 10 to 1. By betting Linden Tree heavily with U.S. bookmakers, Long and Fink made a killing...