£6m Boxing Day bus
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from our industrial correspondent • The municipal bus employers are faced with a £6m bill for back-dated pay rises on Boxing Day and the result is likely to be higher fares in over 90 towns next year.
This is the long-term cost of the thricefrozen agreement for £1-a-week rises to 70,000 bus workers originally signed in December 1967. The present stoppage, under the Prices and Incomes Act, expires on December 26 and the employers will have to pay a full year's retrospective rises.
Aid. Norman Harris, chairman of the Federation of Municipal Passenger Transport Employers, warned last week: -Local authorities are bound to apply for fare increases in order to meet this enormous back payment to busmen."
The El increase in basic weekly rates will, in fact, add about 31s a week to average earnings. Computers have been used to work out the effect on overtime and bonus payments. The final cost is expected to be about E6m.
Aid, Harris admitted that fare increases might be rejected by the Traffic Commissioners. If they are agreed, they might be referred to the Prices and Incomes Board. This would mean another "freeze" by the Government.
Presumably, if councils cannot get the rises through higher fares, the extra money will have to be found from increased rate levies.
Some councils have already applied to the Commissioners for "immediate" fare rises. They were hoping to build up a pool of money to soften the final blow due at Christmas: but the applications were rejected.
Further union demands are certain once the £1 -a-week rises have been paid out. Claims for up to 10s-a-week more are certain as the "price" for further productivity measures and extensions of one-man bus operations.
Ironically, Dundee busmen, out of the national agreement, may have to wait longest for their rises. Their El-a-week agreement was vetoed last week by the Prices and Incomes Board — and this may mean they will have to wait a full 12 months before getting any further rises.