United drivers win one level wages structure
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• Strike-threatening tanker drivers at United Transport (UK) have won a swift victory over their employer after the company backed down from creating a two-tier wages structure.
Last week's agreement between the Transport and General Workers Union and United Transport management averts a series of planned oneday stoppages on the one month-old BP delivery contract for Scotland and the north of England.
It also means that additional drivers taken on by United Transport for the five-year contract will have their pay increased by £1.25 an hour— equalling the rates of drivers transferred to United Transport from the previous contractor, P&O Roadtankers.
The union says that up to 100 drivers, most of them employed at I3P's Grangemouth terminal in Scotland, were willing to strike over the issue.
''There will be no change to the transferred drivers' agreement and the new drivers will have their pay increased to the same level as those from P&O," says Danny Bryan, TGWU national secretary.
United Transport says: "The company has been surprised that the issue of developing a two-tier pay and conditions solution, not uncommon in the petroleum industry, had proved unacceptable to the national negotiator,"