Has £2.50 extra pay demand been dropped?
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• Two interesting industrial relations questions have arisen as a result of CM inquiries in the West Midlands on Wednesday. Has Mr Alan Law dropped his demand for £2.50 hgv driving licence money and has the TGWU been poaching members from the United Road Transport Union in the area?
The first question arises from a wages scale document—headed "Minimum rates of pay of drivers of heavy goods vehicles" which is known to be circulating in the West Midlands area (referred to in CM last week). The scale contains no mention of the £2.50 hgv driving licence money which Mr Law was so adamant about obtaining when he first negotiated with the assenting hauliers group, known as the "consortium". At the time of these negotiations the hauliers said they were quite prepared to discuss straight increases in basic pay, but as Mr Law insisted on the £2.50 being incorporated in any agreement as a quite distinct payment apart from the basic wage, the negotiations broke off. The hauliers offered their drivers a 10 per cent wage increase which was accepted.
If the new scale of minimum rate is intended as the basis on which Mr Law hopes to negotiate with all employers in the area, why, it is being asked, has he not shown the £2.50 hgv driving licence payment as a separate part of the claim? It is understood that the possibility of the claim for this money spreading to other areas—if it was conceded in the West Midlands—might be a hot potato that the union does not wish to handle.
Poaching
It is believed that in the very near future an accusation against the TGWU for poaching members from the URTU in the West Midlands will be put to Mr Vic Feather. general secretary of the TUC. The accusation follows a sudden, almost overnight, change from URTU to TGWU membership by drivers of Morris Transport Ltd, the firm which has been strikebound for five weeks for refusing to pay the £2.50 hgv money earlier in the year.
At the time the URTU had a wages agreement and closed-shop arrangement with the firm but, following a branch meeting, the URTU local representative, Mr T. W. Vickerstaff, found that all the drivers had become members of the TGWU.
Mr Vickerstaff told me on Wednesday (writes David Lowe) that for 18 months he has been endeavouring to arrange a meeting with the TGWU to discuss this matter but has been unsuccessful until this week when he received a promise of a meeting one day next week. It is only this promise which has delayed the complaint about poaching being sent to Mr Feather for his consideration Under the terms of the Bridlington
agreement which is concerned with inter-union disputes such as this.
A similar situation occurred in the area about three years ago, Mr Vickerstaff said, but despite a TUC directive that the membership should be handed back to the URTU, and any fee paid by members to the TGWU refunded, no such actions had been taken and the men concerned were still members of the TGWU.
Mr Law was not available on Wednesday to answer these questions.
Meanwhile in the North . . .
• The claims of Mr Alan Law for an extra £2.50 per week for all holders of hgv licences in the Birmingham area have spread to the Fylde area of West Lancs. I understand, writes John Darker, that a claim on similar lines to that raised at Birmingham is to be submitted to 12 individual employers in the area.
At a recent meeting of more than 50 lorry driver members of the TGWU at Blackpool Trades Club, addressed by Mr D. G. Farrar. regional secretary of the union, it was agreed to proceed with this claim. Mr Jim Page, the union's district officer, is reported as saying that one Blackpool firm has already agreed to pay the claim.
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