BOSSES at Southampton shipbuilder Vosper Thornycroft have offered to meet workers and union officials down the pub to thrash out a solution to the deepening strike crisis.

Personnel director Colin Reed says he is happy to hold talks with the workforce at any venue and time and that he would allow the workers not on strike to return to their duties if talks went ahead.

Management is increasingly concerned that work on four luxury millennium ferries, worth nearly £10 million and designed to take passengers on the Thames from central London to the Dome in Greenwich by the end of the year, could be delayed by the industrial action.

Unions say they will only take up VT's talks offer if the firm reverses its decision to refuse to pay workers even when they were not holding a stoppage.

Mr Reed said: "I have never been unwilling to meet with them. I have made it clear that could take place at ACAS, here on site or even informally down the pub if that is what they want.

"A meeting at ACAS has not been possible because the unions have set pre-conditions that we must pay the workers for the time they were suspended last week, which we cannot do.

"I told the workforce yesterday that I would meet shop stewards even while the strikes were taking place if they got a team together to come to the table.

"In that case I would be prepared to allow the staff whose unions are not holding a stoppage on a specific day to go back to work but they have declined."

Referring to the ferries, Mr Reed added: ''Clearly the action that is being taken by the union will delay construction. But at the present time we are confident we can deliver the project. It all depends how long this thing goes on for.'' Unions blame management for the breakdown in negotiations.

Mike Budd, chairman of the Southampton branch of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions, said the company had retaliated unjustly to the industrial unrest by laying off workers on days when their union was not on strike.

"We made an offer three days ago to meet with ACAS but before that could happen the firm threatened to suspend our members not taking part in industrial action," he said.

"The company cannot issue and carry out threats and then expect us to sit down and talk to them.

''Managers have to reinstate the pay of those people they have suspended before we will have a meeting."

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