The owner of a north Wales factory where 86 striking workers were sacked made no attempt to solve the dispute, an employment tribunal has found.

Members of the Transport and General Workers Union at Friction Dynamics, in Caernarfon, voted in April 2001 to take industrial action over plans by the factory's American owner to change working conditions.

The picket will continue, despite the legal victory

After eight weeks of the strike in June 2001, 86 workers received letters of dismissal for breach of contract.

Owner Craig Smith claimed that he was adhering to the law and had applied the statutory period of notice before dismissing the men.

Workers continued an 18-month picket of the car components factory before taking a claim for unfair dismissal to a tribunal.

The message he sent was needlessly stark

Employment tribunal

The tribunal in Liverpool last month found unanimously in the workers' favour and the panel on Thursday released its reasons for the decision.

The tribunal heard that management of the factory had consulted an employers' reference book after hearing of the workers' decision to strike.

'Bingo'

Where the book referred to a three-month limitation period for re-employing people dismissed for striking, one of the factory managers had written "Bingo".

"Not so bingo" had been written next to a paragraph referring to the eight-week restriction on the ability to dismiss strikers.

The tribunal concluded that these handwritten comments showed that at an early stage of the dispute, dismissal of the strikers was on the minds of management at the factory.

Mr Smith had also refused offers at conciliation, including one from the then-Caernarfon MP Dafydd Wigley, saying that the strikers were no longer his employees - even though the eight week period had not come to an end.

Workers won the support of Dafydd Wigley AM

Mr Smith eventually agreed to a meeting with the conciliation service ACAS.

At that meeting, he told the union that if they returned to work, the workers would have to accept a 15% pay cut.

The tribunal said of that offer:� That was it, as blunt and unadorned as that.

"Of course it was refused.

"Mr Smith must have known it would be.

Compensation

"The message he sent was needlessly stark."

The tribunal decided that Craig Smith did not try to negotiate and deliberately made it impossible to achieve a settlement.

The workers' union the TGWU has welcomed the tribunal's findings.

Craig Smith is currently in the United States, but is expected to return to Caernarfon next week.

There has been no response to the ruling, but he has six weeks to appeal against the tribunal's findings.

The workers have sworn to continue their picket outside the factory until the appeal deadline has passed.

If any appeal bid fails, all the workers could qualify for compensation.