Shorts workers vote for strike

Engineering workers at aerospace company Shorts have voted to hold a half-day strike this Thursday at what they claim is a plan…

Engineering workers at aerospace company Shorts have voted to hold a half-day strike this Thursday at what they claim is a plan by parent company Bombardier to move research, development and design jobs to the Bombardier headquarters in Montreal. The workers also voted for a complete ban on overtime.Senior Bombardier executives, including president Mr Bob Brown, were in Belfast last week as part of a last-ditch attempt to reassure the engineers that this was not the case, in spite of the fact that a review of the company's operations here concluded that it had nearly 200 more engineers than it needed for its existing order book. Management at Shorts say they are dismayed by the workers' decision, and say that it could undermine efforts to secure new business.They said that they were working to avoid compulsory redundancies, and were meeting potential customers in a bid to secure new business.