DATES OF RAIL STOPPAGES

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31341, 11 April 1967, Page 1

DATES OF RAIL STOPPAGES

60 Meetings In Three Days Sixty stop-work meetings will be held by branches of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants on three days this month.

Twenty branch meetings are scheduled for each of April 18, 19 and 20, but one or two meetings may be held on April 21. Each stoppage will be for two hours.

Not all railway transport will stop. Instructions sent out by the national council of the A.S.R.S. to the 58 branches say that long-distance passenger trains and buses on their way through a branch holding a stop-work meeting will continue their journey and will be worked by A.S.R.S. members.

In major centres such as Auckland, where there are as many as six A.S.R.S. branches, two stop-work meetings may be held simultaneously. Otherwise 10 stop-work meetings will be held each morning of the three days, and a further 10 each afternoon. The 58 branches of the society have been arranged into sections to enable national councillors of the society to attend each stop-work meeting.

In two areas, where members are widely separated geographically, two stop-work meetings will be held within the one branch. This will apply in Marlborough, where one stop-work meeting will be held at the branch head-

quarters at Kaikoura and another at the northern end of the branch’s area, and in Central Otago, where the headquarters of the branch is in Dunedin. Meeting Times Most national councillors will each attend two stopwork meetings a day for the three days but some will attend three meetings a day. They will travel from one branch to another, which will partly govern the time each meeting is held. Other determining factors will be the distances members have to travel and transport available. The national council says it hopes to inconvenience the public as little as possible. It believes that stop-work meetings are the only way the branches can make their protest and the only way to consider what further steps should be taken to secure their claims. Margin Claim Earlier this month a statement released by the national council said that the meetings would be informed of the position in relation to the skilled labourers’ margin claim and the Government's

proposal to absorb in the next rifling .rate survey the 6d wage increase recently granted to railway tradesmen by the Railways Tribunal.

“All other services due to commence their outward journey during a stop-work meeting, will not start until after the conclusion of the meeting.”