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Pay rise not effective until June
Page 52
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From our Industrial Correspondent THE Minister of Labour, Mr, Ray Gunter, has decided to give approval to a Wages Regulation Order which will put into effect, about the middle of June, the 7 per cent wages and hours settlement for about 200,000 road haulage workers.
It will give effect to the proposals submitted to him recently by the Road Haulage Wages Council. The Order was being signed this week.
The settlement, which provides for a 3 per cent pay increase, a one hour cut in weekly working hours to 41, and a uniform overtime rate of time and a half, was recommended last month by the Council.
The Minister of Labour has no power to reject wages council recommendations, but he can either delay their implementations or refer them back for further examination.
What has impressed Mr. Gunter are the measures proposed by employers and unions to streamline, and increase productivity within the industry.
In a letter to the leaders of the haulage employers and trade unions he said he hoped that the attention which was being given to measures to increase productivity would result in savings which would help to contain rising costs and that the National Negotiating Committee would soon be in a position to give "a vigorous and sustained lead to the industry on measures to improve efficiency". Mr. Gunter has also asked to be kept informed of progress.
It was the proposed measure by members of the industry that swayed Mr. Gunter to give the "go ahead" to the settlement for what is twice the Government's "norm".
By neither delaying the implementation of the award, nor sending it back to the Prices and Incomes Board, he has repudiated the recent Incomes Board report which condemned the proposed settlement as contributing nothing to higher productivity.
When it appeared, both sides of the industry criticized the report at a meeting with Mr. Gunter on April 27.
From leaders of the TGWU there was a warning of "trouble ahead" if the award was held up. This may have helped the Minister in his decisions. Any industrial trouble would have hit a key industry in the vital movements of exports.
Mr. Gunter has done his best. He has delayed approval longer than usual and fixed the date of operation to mid-June, which is almost exactly a year after the workers last rise. The unions had hoped to get the new deal operating sooner and were thinking in terms of last January.
High Wycombe By-pass: Work is to start at once on the construction of the eastern section of the High Wycombe by-pass and is planned for completion in the spring of 1968. The section will extend for about five miles from the Handy Cross junction to a point on A40 about 3mile west of Beaconsfield.