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Think of a Number . . .
Page 60
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IN a hard-hitting paper on industrial relations, Mr. D. M. Sinclair, general manager of the Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Co., Ltd., told the Institute of Transport on Monday that the time had come to bring realism into wages negotiations. The unions, be said, should cease to demand twice as much as they expected to receive and the employers should cease to offer half as much as they were willing to pay. The result of this practice, he suggested, was for arbitration bodies automatically to split the difference.
Was this policy adopted by the workers' representatives in their claim to the Road Haulage Wages Countil last week? Surely they cannot have expected to receive another increase of 10s. a week within a year of substantial advances in pay? They also laid themselves open to the charge of contradiction in relying on a fourpoint rise in the retail prices index, but at the same time attacking its basis of construction. Contrary to reports in some newspapers, no use was made by the unions of the greater productivity alleged to have been created by the 30 m.p.h. speed limit for heavy goods vehicles or of the reduction in overtime earnings that was supposed to have ensued. These are matters before the National Joint Industrial Council and could hardly have been brought into the current wages negotiations.
There is reason to believe that the employers meant what they said in rejecting the pay claim and others, including an increase of 2s. 6d. a night in subsistence allowance. If the independent members of the Wages Council had not voted with the unions for an adjournment, the matter might have been disposed of at once. The interval of a month will, however, give the employers time to prepare a reasoned reply to arguments of which they had no prior knowledge, and thus give substance to their policy.