Peace initiative
Page 6
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HAULIERS in County Cleveland have been offered an olive branch from regional Transport and General Workers Union members who want to establish a regular forum to discuss common problems.
The move, led by TGWU local officer John Yates who shortly becomes responsible for around 3,000 drivers in an area between Darlington and Whitby and taking in the Teesside conurbation, comes at a time when collective wage negotiations in the area have broken down (see this page).
Mr Yates told CM that hauliers in the region will be invited next month to a meeting at the TGWU's Middlesbrough office to establish how much potential there is for exploiting areas of common agreement.
He said that operators of "significant standing" would be invited to the meeting, for which there was accommodation for 80 people including TGWU representatives.
Near the top of the list of problems, he said, was the infiltration of "cowboy" operators into the area, and he envisaged joint approaches being made by union and employer groups to major industrial companies like ICI to discuss haulage rates and the consequences of failure to raise them. "I believe there has been one hell of a gap of understanding between us," Mr Yates said. "The haulage industry gets a rotten, unfair deal, but I believe that we can do a lot to bridge that gap of understanding."
According to Mr Yates, some success in this direction has already been achieved by car distribution workers based in the area, who have established a North-East coast liaison group which meets three times a year.