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Roadline merger plan
Page 6
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THE NATIONAL Freight Consortium's loss-ridden parcels group wants to merge its two trading arms — Roadline UK and National Carriers Parcels — into one next year in another effort to rescue its fortunes.
The parcels group management, led by managing director Bill Collins who was brought back from the United States at the beginning of the year, met with officials of the Transport and General Workers Union and the National Union of Railwaymen last week to outline their proposals.
It will mean the complete integration of the Roadline and NCP businesses, which already share finance, personnel and engineering services and some depot space. and will require Roadline's TGWU workforce to work alongside NCP's NUR-represented workforce.
There is little joint working between the two unions at present, with a notable exception of NFC's Scottish Parcels subsidiary which was created by merging Roadline and National Carriers operations in Scotland.
NFC has yet to specify how many jobs will be lost as a result of the planned merger, but does not expect more than 1,000 of the 4,5(X) jobs to disappear.
A parcels merger was the less drastic of two possible strategies outlined by NFC chairman Sir Peter Thompson at the consortium's annual general meeting in February. The other was the closure of one of the companies, widely understood to be Roadline.
Then, he was reporting a Roadline loss of 4:4.6 million in 1983/84 and a %.13.6 million loss at NCP, and admitted: "The parcels problem has defeated us."
Without the loss of 1,000 jobs earlier this year, and the streamlining of the overheads, NFC forecast combined losses of 0.5 million. The cuts were supposed to make NCP break even and reduce Roadline's loss to £4 million.
But NFC admits the loss in the year to October 1985 exceeds £8 million, and some industry sources suggest it could be £10 million.
Roadline's TGWU shop stewards were meeting this week to discuss the proposed merger.