Unions warn: driver by Amanda Bradbury
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• A national hire-and-reward strike is looming, warn union chiefs who this week announced a campaign to force employers to end three years of wage freeze deadlock.
Drivers cowed by the long standing threat of 'losing their jobs are now "bomb happy" and ready for battle, say union chiefs.
TGWU national officer Victor McGeer says: "There's a terrific amount of resentment in hireand-reward and the lid's going to blow off it. It's perhaps a bit too early to say if there's going to be a national hire-and-reward dispute now, but it's a possibility in the coming months."
The TGWU will meet shop stewards next month to discuss a national campaign. This could include industrial action, aimed at forcing employers to pay a minimum hire-and-reward wage. It is understood that the union will demand more than £3.50 an
hour. The TGWU says hire-andreward drivers across the country are expressing deep bitterness as they see their own-account colleagues win reported wage increases of up to 15%.
Unions also warn that threatened industrial action by 3,000 English and Welsh FIRS drivers could mushroom into a national strike(CM 20-26 May). "There's a lot of anger and it could well be that BRS is the spark which will ignite the whole thing," says the United Road Transport Union's northern divisional officer Roy Abrahams.
Walk-out threats appear to be starting to force some employers to put improved offers on the table. BRS in Scotland is offering 550 drivers and operations staff a 1,8% increase; an offer the TGWU is recommending drivers accept.
• Drivers at one of NM` Distribution's major depots have voted to accept a controversial cost-cutting exercise that allows agency drivers to officially take