Cementing a new partnership at Blue Circle

Summary

Management and unions at the UK's largest cement producer are working together to restructure the business - aiming to reduce the cost base and improve productivity to meet the competitive challenges of the new millennium.

They are being helped in this by a partnership agreement of a radically new kind, which takes the concept of flexible working in a heavy manufacturing context a stage further than the annualised hours, stable annual salaries, simplified grading structure, multiskilling and teamworking introduced by the company in the late 1980s.