NUR is courting URTU
Page 28
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
by John Darker • In line with TUC policies for fewer, stronger, unions, small unions such as the United Road Transport Union are being subjected to much courting. I understand that the National Union of Railwaymen is one of the old-established trade unions that have put forward serious merger proposals to URTU. Sir Sidney Green, general secretary of the NUR, and a most influential man in the trade union movement, met URTU representatives informally at the August meeting of the International Transport Workers Federation in Vienna and the outlines of a marriage contract were considered.
This development may seem surprising and the odds against it succeeding are formidable: to mention only one, Mr Jackson Moore, URTU's general secretary, is a well-known opponent of railways. He has frequently argued that the Freightliner system is taking the bread out of his members' mouths by means of subsidized competition. On at least one occasion, Mr Moore supported a meeting of the Railway Conversion League—a body that would be happy to concrete over the railroads of this country.
URTU's 25,000 URTU claims a present membership of some 25,000, almost all of them professional drivers. Membership is said to have increased by 3,000 in the last few months. Based at Manchester, and particularly strongly organized in the North, the union has a national membership as far flung as Plymouth, Birmingham, London and the South of England. An agreement with the SCMU limited expansion in Scotland. With great enterprise URTU has recruited numbers of Continental drivers, particularly Austrian drivers, who regularly visit this country, offering them professional services which they find to be valuable. URTU's district organizers reckon to be "on tap" 24 hours a day; members can always get in touch with organizers at their homes out of working hours.
It was predictable that once the Scottish Commercial Motormen's Union joined up with the TGWU the heat would be on the small, independent URTU. The TGWU has made a number of attempts to entice URTU members into its ample bosom. So, it is said, has USDAW--the Union of Shop Distributive and Allied Workers—operating in a field with which URTU is very familiar. Conceivably, the ultimate outcome of the NUR's courtship could lead to a strong road /rail/distribution union which would solve at a stroke many pressing transport problems:
O Serious competition in road transport would be provided with the TGWU, for long the dominant road transport union with major employers.
O The intractable problems of the NUR in facing ever-shrinking rail services would be solved.
O The National Freight Corporation, currently still trying desperately to integrate in a meaningful way National Carriers Ltd continued on page 32
required and the Department's comprehensive manual Driving (HMSO 62+p) deals with the subject in great detail. Drivers who plan to take the test without recognized training are strongly advised to study this manual.
Grim though the results of this survey are, this is not the only problem affecting the hgv driving licence scheme. Some 60 /7C per cent of all applications submitted for licences have to be returned to the applicant because they are incorrect or incomplete Malty applications also are left until thc very last minute which means that if ar application has not been properly made anc has to be returned, the applicant will finc himself without a licence when he needs it.