FEWER SUNDAY BUSES MAY MEAN TROUBLE
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From Our Industrial Correspondent rUTS in services by London Transport are likely to cause more trouble by its busmen, After a series of sporadic strikes and bans on overtime by individual bus garages, a meeting of the central delegate conference of the men voted by 45 to 25 last week against calling a general overtime ban in protest against recent cuts in scheduled services.
But no sooner was this particular difficulty out of the way than London Transport announced new cuts in Sunday bus services to come into force on January 23. Because of a steady fall in Sunday passengers as more and more people use their own cars for week-end travel, some 300 buses—or 12 per cent of the total—will be taken off the roads.
The new cuts will enable London Transport to put more buses on the roads from Monday to Friday. Even with overtime and rest-day working, week-day services are short of 600 scheduled bases, because with a staff shortage of around 4,100 there are not enough crews to man them. Nevertheless, the latest announcement is expected to be used by the militants to make another effort to get a general ban on overtime going. They realize that such a ban offers the best opportunity to force another pay rise.
As The Piotform, the busmen's journal, put it last week : " The great suicidal concession we make is massive overtime. Knock away that prop and the LTB" will be forced to discuss the rates of pay and conditions that alone will solve stall shortage."