Two-year pay success at ERF
Page 14
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• ERF Trucks has concluded a two-year pay deal with its 500-strong workforce which includes a reduction to a 37-hour week, believed to be the shortest in the truck industry.
The hours cut will be seen as a victory for the engineers' campaign for a 35-hour week — but ERF says it comes at a time when pressure on production has slackened.
The first year's wage award, backdated to July, is for 8%. This will be followed by a second year linked to the Retail Price Index, but guaranteeing a minimum of 7%. However, if the RPI should climb above 10% the company and the unions will 'split the difference', so 12% inflation would produce an 11% rise.
The deal is also linked to productivity, and the unions involved — the Transport and General Workers Union, the Amalgamated Engineering Union and the Electricians Union — have agreed to produce more trucks in the same hours.
Paul Foden, ERF's management services director, described the unions' role in the negotiations as "professional and responsible".
0 ERF has won two major contracts which will help to justify its productivity deal with the unions.
Supermarket distribution group William Low has placed an order worth up to 24m with ERF distributor James Bowen & Sons of Edinburgh for 16 EIO 32 ST tractor units, to be supplied over the next six months. The units will service Low's new temperature controlled distribution centre at Livingstone.
Also in Scotland, ERF Strathclyde is supplying six El a 32 tractors to John Wilson & Son of Ayr.