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Truckfleet drivers get strike ballot

18th September 1997
Page 6
Page 6, 18th September 1997 — Truckfleet drivers get strike ballot
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by Ian Wylie and Miles Brignall • The United Road Transport Union is to ballot Ford Truckfleet drivers for strike action over the company's refusal to recognise the union amid allegations that Ford wants to contract the work out to TNT.

URTU's executive committee voted unanimously at the weekend to request strike action from Ford's 300 Dagenham drivers to get the company to recognise the union for collective bargaining. It is also calling on Ford drivers at Halewood and Swansea to support their colleagues at Dagenham if Ford uses "scab drivers" from TNT to break a possible strike next month.

Most of the 200 drivers at Ford's Swansea and Halewood plants are members of the rival Transport & General Workers Union, which is locked in a long-running and bitter dispute with URTU at Dagenham. URTU gener al secretary David Higginbottom says T&G drivers share his members' outrage at reports that the T&G leadership has endorsed Ford's plan to break any URTU strike by outsourcing work to TNT.

The drivers resigned en masse from the T&G last year following a row over new recruitment procedures and allegations of nepotism and racial discrimination. Since then the two unions have waged the most bitter inter-union dispute since the miners strike.

A spokeswoman for Ford says it cannot invite URTU representatives to the collective bargaining process without the consent of the three unions which have signed the company's Blue Book agreement. But Higginbottom claims Ford is being disingenuous and has ample power to persuade the other unions to change their position.


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