JAW JAW, NOT WAR WAR
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Well we've done it now haven't we? The long, hot days of summer are upon us and unless hauliers move quickly to quell the rising wave of anger among drivers, this could be a summer of discontent as the country grinds to a halt with miles of trucks blockading the trunk road network.
If that situation sounds familiar, cast your mind back a year to the situation across the Channel. For once we have something in common with the French—last summer French truck drivers were blockading main roads around Paris in protest at a proposed penalty Joints system. Hundreds of French truck crivers said "non'', the country came to a standstill and the Government duly backed down. At the end of a bitter confrontation might was proved right. Strikes, once dubbed the British disease, are also being seen as the weapon of choice elsewhere in the EC.
And now the bitterness that has been building up among British drivers is on the point of dragging British road haulage into a dispute that will have plenty of losers but no winners (see news story, page 4). Thirty thousand Transport and General Workers Union drivers are tired of being ignored. Some have not had a pay rise since the recession began: unless they are offered at least £4 an hour in next year's pay talks the nightmare of a nationwide strike could become a reality.
Aftei years of pay freezes and declining conditions many drivers feel that reasonable" behaviour has got them nowhere. The Joint Industrial Councils, which were designed to reach amicable agreements between operators and drivers, are fast disappearing: nine survive from the original network of 26. Even ACAS, the conciliation body of last resort, has failed to bring the two sides together. So where do we go from here? For the sake of the drivers, the employers and those delicate green shoots of recovery it must be back to the negotiating table. The message is simple, say union leaders: drivers are getting more and more desperate as each day goes by. One told CM recently: "There's a terrific amount of resentment in hire and reward and the lid's going to blow off it." For many hauliers such an explosion could come as the final blow.