London Busmen to Vote on Pay Offer
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From Our Industrial Correspondent
TROUBLE over the London busmen's
claim is by no means over yet. A special delegate conference of the men, held at the London regional headquarters of the Transport and General Workers' Union on Tuesday, refused to accept the £850,000 a year offer of the London Transport Executive.
At a heated four-hour meeting they turned down a recommendation from their own negotiators to accept and decided instead to refer a decision to union branches.
The offer, amounting to about three per cent overall, would give 5s. per week to garage maintenance staff, 6s. to conductors and country bus drivers and 7s. to central area and Green Line drivers.
A move at the four-hour meeting to reject the offer outright was only narrowly defeated. A second amendment to refer the decision to a vote of more than 100 bus garages was then overwhelmingly carried. What irked the delegates most were the differences in the amounts offered to different grades. They were insisted on by London Transport because of the serious shortage of drivers. Union negotiators had tried hard to get an allround increase of, 6s. 6d. per week.
Branches will be voting on the offer all next week and replies are expected to be in by March plenty of time for the operative date for the offer, which is April I.