ax form dispute: peace in sight
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PROPOSALS which could end the eight-week dispute over the drivers' subsistence f or m emerged from a meeting between the unions, employers' associations and the Inland Revenue this week.
Meanwhile the introduction of the new form, which was supposed to come in on May 31, has been put back to July 27.
The proposals include an assurance that the amount of subsistence allowance paid to drivers will be the rate that their unions have negotiated with the employers and that it will be tax free.
United Road Transport Union deputy general secretary, Mr Jack Hughes, told CM this week that the settlement scheme also included a protection for drivers who did not want to disclose where they spent nights away from home. He said that the plan would be going before the executives of the three unions involvedURTU, the Transport and General Workers' Union and the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers.
TGWU officials would make no comment on the plan. "We have undertaken to let our members know first and we will be putting out a circular on the subject this week," said national organiser-elect Mr Jack Ashwell.
The Inland Revenue proposals are to be put to the union executives and they will meet the Inland Revenue on July 27 to say yes or no.
But despite this week's soothing noises a new strike threat has emerged as the outcome of an unofficial meeting of TGWU shop stewards at Birmingham last week. The threat is of a national strike of drivers on July 14.
A Freight Transport Association spokesman told CM: "The Inland Revenue has bent over backwards to meet the union demands." But the Road Haulage Association remained tightlipped about the whole question except to say that they were "baffled" by the new strike threat.
The threat of a national drivers strike is the latest in a series that have been made over the subsistence question. The last came from URTU general secretary Mr Jackson Moore who said: "If people are told that these forms have got to be signed you'll have a million vehicles off the road."
The only strikes that have actually happened have been isolated incidents in different parts of the country.