Wages Problems Continue in Yorkshire
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!THE meeting of the Yorkshire Joint 1 Conciliation Board, called for Monday, April 4, at Leeds, to consider the wages position, did not take place because of the non-attendance of members of the employees' panel.
A meeting of the employers' panel was held on that day and the following resolution was passed:— " That this meeting of the employers' panel of the Yorkshire Traffic Area Joint Conciliation Board regrets the absence of the trade-union representatives at this meeting, mutually agreed upon at the request of the workers for to-day. This meeting now stands adjourned."
It is understood that the non-attendance of the trade-union representatives was the outcome of objection to a letter which the Yorkshire employers' panel has sent to certain large users of road transport who have given to the Trans
port and General Workers Union an undertaking to stipulate that hauliers doing their work must pay wages in accordance with the scales laid down by the National Joint Conciliation Board.
The letter, it is gathered, deprecated the request for such an undertaking at the present juncture, on the ground that the matter was a subject for negotiation between the employers' and employees' panels of_ the Yorkshire Joint Conciliation Board.
Mr. Ernest Bevin, who is the general secretary of the T.G.W.U., was referring to this letter when, in a statement on March 31, he said : ".A doeument has now come into our hands which makes a request to these traders that they shall not operate their undertaking with the Union, and suggests that negotiations are taking place in Yorkshire with the workers' representatives on the question of the recent recommendations of the National Joint Conciliation Board. On behalf of the Union Executive, I desire to make it clear that there will be no negotiations other than the implementing of the decision of the Board, and I would issue a warning and urge traders not to be misled by any attempt to get behind the decision of this Board, and I urge them to adhere to the undertaking given in the interests of the road-transport industry.
" In the course of the development of the Board," Mr. Bevin also stated, " we have always had trouble with the Yorkshire section, which has been largely responsible for the difficulties associated with the Board."