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Union official slams RHA on pay and productivity
Page 39
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• As the National Negotiating Committee prepared for a vital meeting affecting its future, and in the shadow of the Merseyside lorry drivers' strike, a well-known North-Western union official attacked hauliers' attitudes, and particularly those of the RHA. Mr. Jack Wood, No. 6 regional group secretary of the TGWU, published his views last week.
Making his statement "with a feeling of regret", he said: "I have spent 43 years in the transport industry, 39 of them in the trade union movement and the last 25 in a fulltime capacity in the transport field."
Mr. Wood said that since he had convened a conference of employers in Salford in 1965 many enlightened managements in Lancashire and Cheshire had agreed his £1,000minimum consolidated wages scheme. He had campaigned for a salary structure but there had been little progress in the general haulage field; one gained the impression that as a body hauliers, mainly RHA members, must be badly organized and disloyal.
"In June 1967, the conference mentioned was re-convened and even more employers attended. Reports on successful schemes were once more enthusiastically received, not only from me but also from employers who had seen fit to operate such agreements; but it was mainly the C-licence operator who had achieved the results and once again the Road Haulage Association was not interested.
"From June 1966, the Road Haulage employers have resisted in every con
ceivable way all suggested measures to improve the lot of the road haulage driver and associated colleagues, but now have the impudence to invite the trade union to join with them in public demonstration in their interests against the Transport Bill. I much regret to say that some people from the workers' side have thought fit to join them. The employers as a body wish to object to Government policy with regard to the Transport Bill, but have hidden behind and used Government policy of the Prices and Incomes type of restraint on wages, and grasped with delight the Prices and Incomes Board report on costs and charges in the transport industy and used it quite successfully as policy at the Road Haulage Wages Council.
"At the moment they seem to be waging an anti-Transport and General Workers' Union war in the hopes that they can either force us to join them, as others have done to form an 'employers' mutual aid society', or cause dissension among our members. I can assure you that on neither of these counts will they be successful; but when they do show a responsible attitude to improve the industry so far as productivity, wages and conditions are concerned, they will possibly find the position changed.
"If the industry is to meet successfully the Government pro-railway attitude, it is vital that agreement is reached on future policy of the industry, particularly in the A and B licence field, based on speed, cost and efficiency. We in the Transport and General
Workers' Union are ready, as we have been demonstrating for the past nine years in my region, to get together with responsible and authoritative representatives of the employers, to work out our joint salvation based on realistic co-operation, but the results of such co-operation and initiative must benefit not only the employers and the public at large, but also give a fair return to the road haulage workers, who are as hardworking and loyal to this nation as any section of the community. The ball is in the employers' court."