LONDON STRIKES ENDED

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25086, 18 January 1947, Page 9

LONDON STRIKES ENDED

Dockers And Lorry Drivers RETURN ~TO WORK TO-DAY ' (NZ. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 10.30 pm.) LONDON, Jan. 17. The strike of London lorry drivers is over, and the men have been recommended to go back to work on Saturday morning, nearly two weeks after the strike began. This decision was reached yesterday afternoon by delegates representing the strikers and the Transport and General Workers’ Union.

The chairman of the port workers’ defence committee said that all the dockers who have been on strike ■will return to work to-morrow.

The secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (Mr Arthur Deakin) said that the employers had undertaken to reinstate all their workers and to take no action against them because of the strike. Before the end of the strike was announced more lorry drivers had come out in several provincial towns, and at the London and Tilbury dooks 17,000 men were on strike and more than 100 ships were laid up. The new joint industrial council established on January 14 to speed up negotiations on the claims of the London haulage strikers met for the first time yesterday and elected officers and made other preparations for a meeting on January 19, when it will consider claims tabled at the meeting by trade union members. The employers will meanwhile use the opportunity to discuss the claims. Reuter’s labour correspondent says it is understood that the employers have agreed to an eight-hour day, a 40-hour week, and overtime pay for time in excess of eight hours. The Road Haulage Association has stated however, that the employers made no official offer before the council met. “The general relief at the ending of the London haulage strike must be tempered with some anxiety about the methods whereby a settlement was reached,” says “The Times” in a leading article. While formally the men returned to work ‘so that their claims may be reconsidered, it is reliably suggested that the strikers’ leaders were given assurances that certain of those claims would be met by the employers. “A continuation of the strike would have been a most serious matter, but it may in the end prove even more serious, if the workers find that by unofficial action tfiey can secure conditions unobtainable by other means. If there is one thing which can be more damaging to the orderly conduct of industrial relations than an unofficial strike it is a successful unofficial strike.” *