RAIL STRIKE THREAT

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27224, 16 December 1953, Page 11

RAIL STRIKE THREAT

Mediation By Minister

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, December 15. Eighty thousand engineers in railway workshops may be drawn into the threatened strike of railwaymen during Christmas week.

A move will be made today to bring them out at midnight on December 20 with other members of the State-owned railways in a stoppage which would paralyse the nation’s transport system. The Minister of Labour (Sir Walter Monckton) will attempt to make peace between the British Transport Commission and the National Union of Railwaymen, representing 400,000 railway workers. He will meet officials of both sides today to urge them to agree to a Court inquiry into the dispute. Sir Winston Churchill called an emergency Cabinet meeting last night to hear reports of the strike threat and may call more if the situation does not ease.

The strike leaders have already brought union members on London’s underground services into the proposed stoppage, though their pay claim is being negotiated separately If the strike materialises, it would wreck the distribution of Christmas mail and food and prevent thousands of people travelling home for a festive holiday.

The Government has five days to try to avert the stoppage. The dispute stems from a demand for a wage rise of 15 per cent, lodged with the commission by three unions last August. The commission rejected if, but the Railway Staff Tribunal, on appeal, awarded the workers a ■ weekly rise of 4s—a seventh of what they claimed. The commission accepted the increase, but the unions rejected it. KT U -S s^ q j en L ta i ks . the unions split. The N.U.R. decided to strike, but other unions—the Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, and the Transport and Salaried Staffs Association—decided to continue negotiating with the commission Railway wages range from £5 17s 6d a week to £8 Bs.