Industrial action at an Essex firm has been called off after workers backed down in a £5-a-week pay dispute.

Some 120 manual workers at Heybridge printing firm ET Heron on the Bentalls Industrial Estate have resumed duties after almost two weeks of deadlock. Bosses refused to talk and now the action has been called off.

Vernon Robson, branch secretary of the Graphical, Print and Media Union, said workers were worried that if they continued with their strikes they would lose their jobs.

He said: "The staff made this decision after seeing the strike wasn't having the right effect. There was less work coming in and so they needed fewer people, meaning industrial action was effectively useless."

Production director Ray Lesnik said the company, which employs 500 people and is one of the biggest in the Maldon area, was pleased to be back to full capacity, but orders were still not up to previous levels.

For more on this story see www.business-in-essex.co.uk

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.