London Trouble?
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From Our Industrial Correspondent
I ONDON TRANSPORT, which only recently concluded lengthy negotiations for a pay rise for its busmen, will shortly be faced with new demands for a wide variety of fringe benefits. And side by side with this there will be increasing pressure to ban overtime in an effort to force the Board to get its establishment, at present 2,000 below strength, up to full strength.
Among the fringe benefits being sought are adequate sick pay, a substantial pension scheme, holiday pay based on average weekly earnings, double time for Sunday work and a 40-hour week. These are all included in a resolution which the Victoria branch of the T.G.W.U. has circulated to London bus branches.
But potentially more serious is the threat to ban overtime. It stems from a resolution passed at a recent meeting of a central bus conference, in which London Transport Board was condemned for "quite deliberately" keeping its staff more than 2,000 short of scheduled requirements. The union was called "to defend and to act in the best interests of trades unionism by ending this situation and thus to afford opportunities of employment for unemployed workers with the London Transport Board ".
Although overtime was not mentioned in the resolution, the militants among the busmen argue that an end to systematic overtime is implied.
London Transport denies that it is deliberately keeping its numbers down. It points out that it has to keep recruits up to a certain standard and therefore some applicants for jobs have to be turned down. It averted one crisis when it offered extra payments last week to men having to work more than 4-1hours without a meal break under the new summer schedules. They were accepted by a delegate conference and avoided trouble which had threatened.