lack to work; and
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3 massive backlog!
CM went to press thounds of drivers nationwide ,.re returning to work with e news that both sides in the onth-long strike had agreed accept the award of a Bristol bunal of £64 for a 40-hour eek.
But despite the return to ork the Road Haulage ssociation was less than ippy about the award. "We alised that there was an eleent of risk in the tribunal yard but we are surprised at ,e level of the settlement — e were expecting £62.50 or 3," said a spokesman.
RHA headquarters expected e strike to be over by the end the week and some areas we already held meetings ith the Transport and eneral Workers Union which ere expected to end in veement on £64.
RHA director general eorge Newman said on ionday that the decision to :cept the findings of the ibunal had not been reached n the national interest" and a added that the dispute had )st the industry Elm a day nce it started on January 3. "Everyone has lost," said Mr ewman. It has been esmated that it will take the verage driver over two years ) make up the lost cash sulting from the strike.
If the hauliers pass on the icreased wages to the conamer in the high street it would add only .00625p per pound of goods to prices.
The award of the tribunal sitting in Bristol, former TGWU general secretary Frank Cousins, now 74; Industrial Society director John Garnett as chairman and Bristol solicitor Geoffrey Jones for the hauliers is close to the RHA offer on an hourly basis. At present a driver on £53 a week works at £1.32 an hour. TGWU's claim was for £1.80 an hour for 35 hours and the RHA offered £1.50 an hour for 40 hours. The tribunal settlement figure works out at £1.60 an hour.
Now the industry faces the problem of moving a backlog of goods — and this will depend to a large extent on the availability of ships to move exports that have been piling up in manufacturers' warehouses.
And the strike of public service workers refusing to grit roads will mean that some vehicles will not be on the roads for reasons of snow and ice.
This week the RHA again denied that there had been a crumbling of the association members resolve not to go above the £60 offer.
A spokesman commented that even strike organiser Alex Kitson estimated that only 1,000 of the 15,300 RHA members and 46,400 hauliers had settled outside the area agreements.
In the areas the strike has had a mixed effect from the Devon and Cornwall area where there is said to be no strike anyway to the West Midlands and the North West where the strike was total.
But in the normally militant Humberside area the union had already settled on £64 on Monday.