Yorkshire JIC talks prosper
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YORKSHIRE will get an area Joint Industrial Council, but no one can say how soon.
At a meeting on Monday considerable progress was made in reconciling the different views of road haulage trade unions. However, some knotty constitutional matters still have to be sorted out.
The meeting was one of the first in a series designed to test industry reaction to the establishment of area JICs. I understand that Mr Bob Burns, the Leeds area director of the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), was satisfied that there •are no insoluble difficulties in devising a framework in which the Transport and General Workers' Union and the United Road Transport Union could engage in pay bargaining in an area likely to include Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield and Hull.
There are many companies in the North where TGWU and URTU membership works side by side.
In British Road Services the two unions have been represented on local joint committees for many years, with no particular difficulties.
The next step in Yorkshire, I understand, will be an ACASled discussion with road haulage employers to •see how strong is the common ground to extend the pay negotiating area—assuming an area JIC is set up. For some time there has been a pay negotiating set-up for Leeds and Bradford hauliers—a joint activity—and this has worked very satisfactorily.
The recent ,proposal of the Road Haulage Association for a single 'statutory JIC to cover the area presently covered by the Road Haulage Wages Council, has highlighted the very real conflicts of view not only on the employers' side of
by John Darker
the industry but within the ranks of trade unionists.
Even in the restricted area of Yorkshire some constitutional matters remain to be sorted out before ACAS could decide that, in principle, Yorkshire is ready for a JIC. It would not be a simple matter to separate out the respective functions of the regional framework—Bradford/Leeds, Sheffield, and Hull—from the functions each local area would claim for itself.