Longer leave stoppage

BY A WORKERS PRESS CORRESPONDENT YESTERDAY'S half-day strike by 2,600 members of the Post Office Engineering Union for longer leave got under way at the three London PO factories with gate metings.

At Isington, executive member Sid Kent (above) addressed a meeting of about 1,000 workers and a resolution was passed expressing 'dissatisfaction at the excessive delays in dealing with the just claims' and deploring 'the complete absence of realistic negotiations'.

The leave claim for assistant factory technicians was first submitted in 1966.

kers' worst confirmed handle cargo will •get £28 for a flat week.

The three-weeks' annual holiday will be paid at £33 10s.

The real sting is in the 'manning, flexibility and mobility clauses, regarded by the dock employers as the lynch-pin of the deal. These state that in order to achieve maximum efficiency all men will:

'Accept advance orders to report for work; move from ship to quay or quay to ship at any time either singly or in gangs; move from discharging to loading and vice-versa at any time; start and continue work irrespective of the number of men available; transfer between sheds crews in the same area and other

available capable work' Objections The deal gives the employer the right to direct men as necessary, and lays down that amniover WhO nhiects must raise his objection first through his supervisor and then through the shop steward.

This will not be as easy as it sounds.

The employers have rejected the unions' demand for 120 full-time shop stewards, on the docks Instead, the unions have now agreed that this quota full-time Stewards will maintained only for the first that one other al tee halved. unless the Moderniza. tion Committee unanimously decides otherwise.

"The amniover. are cock-a-hoop getting about the suat through. and Thei chairman Walter Lewis has paid tribute