500 at private steel plant to return to jobs in Britain

Five hundred workers at a privately owned steel plant have decided to drop out of Britain's five-week-old national steel strike and return to work. "If others follow suit it would be a big worry for us," commented Ted Thorne, the regional strike committee chairman, after the men at Hadfield's, a central England firm, had voted at a mass meeting.

Negotiations between the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation and the state-owned British Steel Corporation are at a standstill over a 20 percent pay raise claim for the union's 90,000 striking members.