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Knowles de-licenses fleet
Page 39
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• Mr. Gerald Knowles, of Knowles, Transport, the strike-torn Wisbech haulagd company, told CM on Tuesday that he had de-licensed and de-insured his entire fleet of some 60 vehicles last Friday afterhoon.
Trouble came to the comPany !' when dismissal notices were issued to all 60 of Knowles' drivers, on strike following the management's refusal to accept the Transport and General Workers' Union's call for a substantial pay increase (CM January 24), On Wednesday of last week Mr. Knowles met with a representative of the TGWU and a conciliation officer from the Department of Employment and Productivity in order to try to solve the deadlock. Mr. Knowles told CM that agreement has been reached "on principle only" that he should reinstate 50 per cent of those drivers he had sacked; the choice of the drivers to be taken back would have been his. This offer, he said, was to have been put to the men by Mr. Alfred Avison, the TGWU Peterborough district secretary, at 5 p.m. the following Friday evening. In that day's issue of the Peterborough Evening Telegraph, printed well before 5 p.m., there appeared a statement by Mr. Avison that Mr. Knowles would either have to reinstate all the dismissed men or none at all.
Mr. Avison told CM on Tuesday that the statement was not one of union policy but a personal opinion. He later put forward to the men Mr. Knowles' proposal--on which he claims there had been no agreement reached whatsoever—and the men rejected it.
Nearly half of those men who had gone on strike at the beginning of the dispute, said Mr. Avison, had since found alternative employment. If Mr. Knowles' proposal was accepted only five men would remain out of work.
Mr. Knowles, however, is not likely to submit to any pressure from the union. "While I pay their wages," he said, I will dictate who I am employing and who I sack."