New pressure for Liverpool settlement
Page 35
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
by our industrial correspondent
• Liverpool's 34,000 bus drivers and conductors, who have been on unofficial strike for a month, have been promised speedy negotiations following a return to work. A mass meeting on Tuesday heard about new efforts to reach a way out of the present deadlock.
Talks between their unions, the Transport and General Workers and the General and Municipal Workers, and Liverpool Corporation broke down again last week. But the Corporation promised that on the day following a resumption of work, it would be willing to start negotiations on a productivity agreement. If necessary, it was willing to call a special council meeting to avoid delays.
About 150 busmen have left the Corporation since the strike began. This brings the staff shortage to nearly 1,000 and normal services will be impossible for a number of weeks.
The Ministry of Labour has ruled that the busmen's pay pact cannot go ahead before the Prices and Incomes Board has completed its report on the issue. It had been hoped, however, to draw up a formula for programming and timing future wage talks following the end of the strike. Discussions between the employers and unions did not centre around wage claims or awards but a productivity agreement to end a number of restrictive practices.
A joint management-union delegation saw Mr. Ray Gunter, as Minister of Labour, last week and, in a statement, said: "The delegation impressed on the Minister the great urgency of the implementation of a local agreement between the Corporation and the unions for an additional payment of 23s a week to the men. The Minister regretted that he personally was unable to accede to our request for this implementation. But he undertook to urge upon the chairman of the Prices and Incomes Board the greatest possible speed in dealing with the reference of this question.