NOISES OFF
Page 75
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' BY way of a change, operators may have breathed a sigh of relief at the news that an application has come from the trade unions for a substantial increase 1 wages and that the request will be considered by the Load Haulage Wages Council in a month's time. No mployer, however well-intentioned, likes to be told that he lay soon be faced with a compulsory order to pay his mployees more. But so many disquieting things have appened since the last application that a return to the old outine may actually be welcome.
Progress towards the latest wage increase was already /ell advanced when it ran into Mr. Selwyn Lloyd's pay ause. The only material effect was very probably to postone for a few weeks the (tate when the new scales of vases might have been expected to come into effect, lthough when it came to the point neither the Minister of .abour nor the Wages Council themselves saw fit to vary he increases originally proposed. However, the date fixed or implementation was taken as sufficient reason by the :nions to include road haulage within the scope of their ttack on the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
rHE extent of their success is unknown. In one or two
■ arts of the country, a large proportion of the employers .greed to pay the increase a little earlier than they were equired to do by law. Elsewhere, the current Wages Order ook effect exactly in accordance with its terms. In pracice, the benefit to the workers who were given more avourable treatment was no more than perhaps it a week or a maximum of six weeks.
There the matter may seem to have ended. • But the inions, or some of them, were little disposed to let the ridustrial situation rest. Their, policy seemed to be to tttack on every possible front. Within three months, they vere talking about another rise in road haulage wages. [hey criticized the proposal to increase to 40 m.p.h. the peed limit for commercial vehicles, partly on the grounds hat it would lead to the introduction of new schedules :nd some loss of earnings. At least one union official spoke o the Court of the "meagre treatment handed out" by he Wages Council.
More recently there has been the 'somewhat mysterious tffair of Road Services (Forth), Ltd., and the Industrial 7ourt. The Transport and General Workers' Union laimed, in effect, that the company ought to provide the arne wages and conditions as those provided by British toad Services. This was said to be in accordance with the rerms and Conditions of Employment Act, 1959, under vhich the court can order a company to comply with an tgreement between parties representing a substantial r op or tion of employers and a substantial proportion of vorkers.
The court found that neither condition was satisfied by 3.R.S., which was an administrative division of the British Fransport Commission. Once this had been established, here was no point in proceeding further with the case. It nay therefore remain no more than a curiosity, and in any :ase it was concerned only with administrative, professional, echnical, supervisory and clerical workers, and not with hose covered by the Wages Orders. Its chief interest may )0 that it provides another example of the way in which the aressure has been kept up against the employers.
For several reasons, therefore, it is reassuring that the latest approach to the maligned Wages Council follows the old familiar pattern. In addition to a substantial increase the unions are asking that the remaining grade 2 areas should be uplifted to grade 1, and that the minimum overtime payment should be at the rate of time-and-a-half, instead of, as at present, time-and-a-quarter for the first six hours.
IN the past the unions have never come away from the council chamber empty handed. Road haulage wage negotiations are a supreme illustration of the tag that history repeats itself, and some improvement in wages is generally expected from next month's meeting. Steady progress is not an insignificant advantage, and the workers in particular have come to value the machinery that works quietly on their behalf, remote from the accusations that it has had its day and that a more militant onslaught ought
to be made on the reluctant employers. , The present wages structure has grown by a process of accretion rather than organically, and it might therefore be thought vulnerable to attack. In an up-to-date context, some of its provisions may seem odd and even harsh. A good example is the basic 42-hour weekly wage of £8 19s. 3d. for the driver in a grade 2 area of a vehicle with a carrying capacity of up to 5 tons. To say the least, such a wage does not seem generous for a week's work, especially if the man has family responsibilities. What has to be known before passing judgment, however, is the number of drivers actually receiving less than £9 in a week.
THE importance of the extra benefits that help to make up the true wage may be guessed from the union's demand for increased overtime rates. There may be many drivers who would prefer their rise, or part of it, in this form, and there may be employers of the same opinion. An exactly. contrary point of view has sometimes been expressed. It has been suggested that the proportion of overtime to basic rates is unbalanced, and that more attention should be paid to fixing appropriate minima. Behind the argument is the feeling that, where it is so much in the interest of a driver to work overtime, he will be tempted to do so, especially because he has more opportunitie.s of escaping supervision than is the case with workers in other industries.
Other radical reforms of the wages structure have been proposed from time to time. They have. been less heard recently, and this may Well be because of some of the disturbing noises off. The reformers have come to realize that revision may not stop at the changes that are thought desirable. Once provide the excuse for discussing al revolution and there is no knowing where the process will eventually end.
As a consequence the road haulage industry, both workers and employers, may be more resigned than they were before to put up with. what some of them regard as imperfections. They have found that the flaws hardly show up at all in practice, irritating though they may be when viewed in the abstract. Properly used, the machinery of an employers' side and a workers' side, with three independent members, usually seems to arrive at a fair and sensible conclusion.