BUS INDUSTRY FACES BIG PAY CLAIMS
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FROM OUR INDUSTRIAL CORRESPONDENT
ANEW series of hefty pay claims faces Britain's bus industry and spearheading the campaign will be London's 36,000 busmen. Their leaders decided at a meeting on Monday to put in an immediate three-point claim to the London Transport Board. They want:
(1) A " substantial" pay rise. The figure the busmen have in mind is an increase of 30s. a week all round. This, they say, is essential if the acute shortage of staff, and particularly of drivers, is to be overcome.
(2) A 40-hour, five-day week in place of the present 84-hour fortnight worked in 11 days—six one week and five in the other.
(3) A third week's holiday with pay.
The claim, which was to be formally submitted to London Transport without delay, is believed to have the backing of Mr. Frank Cousins, general secretary of the men's union, the T.G.W.U. Last month he warned the Board that the union would press for better wages and conditions and blamed poor wages for the acute shortage of staff.
The new demands, which originated at Dalston garage where Mr. Bill Jones, the busmen's chairman and a prominent member of the union's executive, is employed, now virtually take the place of the claim for a long-service allowance of 5s. a week for each five years of service and for a third week's holiday with pay.
This claim was discussed with the Board last Friday, but little progress was made. The L.T.B. side rejected the claim for long-service pay, pointing out that the problem was not to retain the older men but the new recruits, They were prepared, however, to consider the holiday claim in the context of a general agreement on pay and working conditions. This would have to include the Board's proposals for increasing productivity, including the introduction of oneman buses on outer suburban routes, This the busmen were not prepared ta accept and the whole claim is now likely to be quietly forgotten.
If granted in full, the new demands would cost London Transport more than £3m. in a full year and, together with higher pay demands by the underground men, would almost certainly lead to a substantial rise in bus and tube fares.
Some 170,000 provincial busmen are B20 likely to follow the London men with parallel claims to their own employers. Representatives of the Transport Workers' Union, which is the largest single union representing provincial busmen, agreed last week to put in a claim for a substantial pay rise and a 40-hour week They will now meet representatives of the other bus unions to formulate their precise demands.
Since the provincial men have been complaining about the differential paid to the London men and would like to have parity of pay and conditions, they are likely to decide on a claim of not less than 30s. a week. This will be presented both on behalf of 100,000 company busmen and 70,000 municipal employees.
Although most attention in London will now be concentrated on the new claim there is unlikely to be any immediate end to the troubles with the Board. Last week-end's unofficial strikes at a number of garages over new bus schedules are likely to be repeated again this week-end. The ban on overtime which has been imposed at more than 10 garages is also likely to continue, but the demand by central London men for a complete official ban on overtime is unlikely to be granted.
Excursions Demand Down ON the whole, Wallace Arnold drivers have worked well this season, but there have been one or two who have sometimes been quite irresponsible in their failure to maintain loyalty to the company.
This comment is made in a message to coach drivers by Mr. Geoffrey Steel, traffic manager of the company, in he first issue of the Wallace Arnold Gazette —the new Barr and Wallace Arnold Group newsletter.
Mr. Steel adds that all experienced drivers realize that the demand for excursions is dropping year by year, as a result of more car ownership and competition from payments on luxury articles.
As a result, the Wallace Arnold Group is having to fight very hard to persuade people to continue to travel and also to get new people to travel.
One way, said Mr. Steel, was to provide day-return trips, using motorways where possible, to distant places; Wallace Arnold would continue such excursions next year and might add to them.