WORKERS at the Cowley Mini plant will this week vote on whether to accept a deal which will see their wages rise by 4.9 per cent.

The deal on the table will see the annual basic wage for a grade two day shift worker rise to £22,095 from this month for a 37 hour week.

And that money is set to rise again next year to £22,879, according to the offer negotiated by the Transport and General Workers Union with bosses at parent firm BMW in Munich.

Union convenor Bernard Moss said: "We shall recommend acceptance of the offer which is 4.9 per cent in year one and four per cent in year two."

Shop stewards will put the offer tomorrow to day and night shift workers, and to weekend shift workers on Friday. The offer covers the 26 months until December 2008.

Mr Moss added that opportunities to work late shifts, and regular late shift workers, could earn up to 25 per cent more.

About 3,500 of the 4,500 workers at the Cowley plant are on production, and most of them are on grade two rates. The rest include managers and skilled engineers.

At present 2,000 production workers are directly employed by BMW with the other 1,500 employed by agencies Manpower and Right for Staff.

Mr Moss said that agency staff receive about 16.5 per cent less than BMW staff, down from 20 per cent two years ago.

He said: "The union is gradually working towards parity but the management still appears to favour a difference so as to dangle a carrot in front of would-be staffers. But it doesn't seem fair that a man one side of a Mini is earning less than the man the other side."

Mr Moss added that another 300 agency workers, some of whom have worked at the plant for six years, are to go onto the BMW payroll shortly - bringing the number of agency workers down to 1,200.

Mr Moss said that workers at the company's parent firm, BMW AG in Germany, still receive more than their counterparts at Cowley for similar work but that the union was working towards parity here too.

German workers receive greater profits and performance bonuses.

Plant spokesman Nikolai Glies said: "The proportion of success-related bonus is higher in Germany, where there is no guaranteed bonus, but it is our intention to increase that element here too in the future."