Act forces mail vans to break picket line
1972Stephen JohnsPost office and public servicesEngineering Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
FROM STEPHEN JOHNS IN POSTMEN in Glasgow have been to break picket lines after being Industrial Relations Act.
The instruction came from of the Union of Post Office London headquarters.
The events leading up to the new ruling which breaks past practice within the trade union movement began on Tuesday when a postman driver from Glasgow's Uddington depot turned back from a picket line at Caterpillar Engineering. Engineers are on strike there over a wage claim.
The action was reported by the firm to the Glasgow post office authorities and supervisor John Black warned the men that what they were doing was illegal.
To support the allegation he read out the revelant clauses of the Industrial Relations Act on sympathetic action by workers not directly involved in a dispute, and the Post Offices Act.
At a meeting the next day it was hinted that the union could face big fines if the men continued to respect the picket line.
The issue was reported to Madden who contacted UPW national organizer Mr A. Nash in London. Marsh is understood to have contacted the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers in London and in the west of Scotland.
Eventually the drivers were told to go through the picket lines and they began deliveries to the factory yesterday.
Militant postmen in Glasgow are very disturbed by the decision which they say establishes a precedent. Feeling is intensified by the fact that the Caterpillar workers supported the postmen in their own strike last year.
It is believed to be the first time that mail vans have been instructed by the union to break the picket line. For example, at the recent BRS strike at East Kilbride van drivers turned back trom the picket line and left mail at their depot for the firm to collect.
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told by their union threatened by the John Madden, district organizer Workers, on advice from his