PROPOSALS from the Road Haulage Association to set up a
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committee to discuss the future of wages negotiations at top level have been firmly rejected by the transport workers' union.
Following reports of a committee along the lines of a Joint Industrial Council, an .RHA spokesman said that the proposal was specifically aimed at wages talks.
But this week Transport and General Workers' Union national organiser Jack Ashwell told CM: "We have stipulated that wages are not part of any committee that we will join.
"We have made our position clear to both ACAS (the Government's Arbitration, Conciliation and Advisory Service) and the RHA that wages negotiations must be done through our local and regional organisation," said Mr Ashwell.
The original proposal was made by RHA director-general George Newman who wrote to both the TGWU and United Road Transport Union asking for their reactions to the idea.
An RHA spokesman commented: "There has got to be some contact at top level over wages otherwise there will be leapfrogging and the whole thing will become fragmented."
The spokesman continued: "We would like to have a statutory joint industrial council but I can't see it happening. For once we have taken the initiative — someone has got to make the first move," he said.
Mr Ashwell was adamant that the TGWU would stick to its declared policy of allowing pay negotiations to be carried on at regional and local level.
The RHA plans dates from February 1976 when it wrote to the Department of Employment asking for the establishment of an SJIC before the Road Haulage Wages Council was wound up.
At the time Mr Newman told the Department: "We consider the Road Haulage Wages Council should not be abolished until a satisfactory alternative is provided and that an SJIC would in all circumstances constitute such an alternative."
But transport workers leader Jack Jones was jubilant at the abolition of the national body: "This is the beginning of a new era in collective bargaining within the industry," he told members.
He stated: "There is now adequate voluntary collective negotiating• machinery to establish professional status and appropriate rates for our commercial driver membership."