Union Merger Proposed

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30480, 30 June 1964, Page 13

Union Merger Proposed

<N Z Press Assn —Copyright) LONDON. June 28. Britain’s three ffirgest unions should merge into a new organisation. 3m strong, proposes a Cambridge professor. The unions are the Transport and Genera] Workers’ the General and Municipal Workers’ and the Amalgamated Engineering Union Professor H. A. Turner, professor of industrial relations at Cambridge, argued his case in an article in the British

“Journal of Industrial Relations.” He said the present efforts of the Trade Union Congress to revise Britain’s trade union structure might result in amalgamations of small unions. This would increase the diversity of the big unions and do little to improve co-ordination at the level of industry bargaining and oolicy. “The Times” Labour correspondent said a merger such as the professor suggests 'would transform the T.U.C.

since it would dominate congress and reinforce the T.UC.’s effective authority. For the first time an effective co-ordinaiton of union negotiating policy over the major area of wage-earning employment would become a practical possibility. It would also largely solve the problem of the shop stewards’ relation to the official union machine. Professor Turner concedes that the merger would be a task of “formidable complication and delicacy.”