Union compiling employees' complaints
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• Reports this week that members of the Transport and General Workers Union in the Peterborough area are acting as spies in their employers' premises were hotly denied by the union's district secretary, Mr. Alfred Avison. "I have been accused of compiling dossiers on operators from information supplied by my members,he said. "This is nonsense."
Mr. Avison pointed out that he had 300 or 400 correspondence ales and if a member brought a complaint to him he put it into the appropriate file "for future reference". The point of the complaints usually fell into three categories he added—pay, maintenance or administration.
As an example of the type of complaint Mr. Avison recounted a case which he had received this week. It was alleged that an employer was engaging casual labour at 5s per hour. "He engages these men all week including Saturday and Sunday; the regular drivers do not get weekend work and they leave his employment. The casuals are then employed full-time, further casuals are engaged and the process starts all over again,said the union secretary.
He added that it was this type of complaint that the union would use to form the basis of its objection when the haulier applied for his operator's licence. -The point is that the 'TGWU is not the only objector to an operator's licence—the police, Ministry of Transport and the Road Haulage Association can also object and no doubt they will have done so before we get the chance. However, I will be passing my information to union headquarters so that they can object. There are a number of operators in this area I will be glad to see go out of business," he said.
Mr. Avison went on to state that he had received a complaint this week from a member who had been lined £10 by his employer for misuse of a vehicle. "This is another one for the file," he said.
An official of the TGWU in London told CM that there was no instruction to district secretaries to compile dossiers but that information supplied by them would be considered as a basis for objection when hauliers applied for operators' licences.
Footnote: The Ministry of Transport is not a statutory objector to operators' licences. All statutory objectors will be given the same opportunity to object and there are no priorities.