BUS STOPPAGES PLANNED

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30919, 27 November 1965, Page 1

BUS STOPPAGES PLANNED

- Drivers’ Protest Over Rosters

No public buses would run anywhere in New Zealand for the Christmas week beginning Monday, December 20, unless the employers readjusted altered rosters, said the secretary of the Christchurch branch of the Tramway Workers’ Union (Mr L. C. J. Southon) yesterday.

Mr Southon is also president of the New Zealand Tramway Workers’ Union.

Unless the employers corrected the rosters in every New Zealand centre where applicable, he said, there would also be no public buses running anywhere in New Zealand in New Year week, Easter week, or any other week in which a statutory holiday fell. In a nation-wide sec-

ret ballot counted in Wellington yesterday,

said Mr Southon, about 98 per cent of the members of the New Zealand Tramway Workers’ Union,... had decided not to work any statutory holiday weeks in which rosters were switched. "If they change the roster of one man in Christchurch, it will mean every branch in New Zealand will stop,” said Mr Southon.

The decision, he said, would be treated on a national basis, so that small branches of the union such as Invercargill would not suffer. For instance, he said, if rosters were not corrected by the employers in a place like Invercargill the bus services for the whole of New Zealand would stop for the particular week the statutory holiday applied. “It might be hard on the people,” said Mr Southon, "but we have to make a stand on this sort of thing.” Days Off Changed Mr Southon said that the transport boards in New Zealand put out threemonthly rosters. The Christmas week days off in the Christchurch roster had been

changed by the Christchurch Transport Board. The employers in some other centres had also changed the days off for tramway workers in Christmas week. Unless the employers throughout New Zealand rectified these rosters it would now automatically mean that all public bus services in New Zealand would stop on Monday, December 20, for the Christmas week.

“The employers are tn effect saying to some tramway workers, ‘all right, you regard the statutory holidays as one of your normal days off,’ ” said Mr Southon. “No other industry would accept this and we won’t accept it.”

Mr Southon said that the union was determined it was “not going to be pushed around.”

An award was signed on June 29, which said workers would receive penalty rates for statutory holidays. Opposing Views In effect, what the employers were now saying, he said, was that “any time a statutory holidays falls, as one of your normal days off you take the statutory holiday off and work five other days in the week.”

Mr Southon said that what the workers were saying now was:

“If we work five days during the week, and the statutory holiday falls on the

Monday, then we are entitled to overtime rates for one of these five days. We want our normal two days off. “If we work on a statutory holiday, we want double time for the statutory holiday, as is laid down in the award.” Mr Southon said the nationwide bus stoppages would apply only to weeks in which statutory holidays fell, and in which the rosters had been changed. “Unfortunate” He said it was unfortunate that the first stoppage would be in Christmas week. This was not the doing of the workers, but it was the week in which the employers had decided to “try the workers on.” “It looks very much as if the employers are trying us on over Christmas week,” said Mr Southon.

“We would be very loathe to take action, but we have just taken a national ballot. “We put it to our membership on a free vote. .We don’t influence them in any way. We did not tell them how to vote.

“If we are not required to work on a statutory holiday we want it off on the same conditions as other workers have it off.

“They have it off, and they're paid for the day; and they have two other days off that week,” said Mr Southon.