Bus cleaners meet union

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33933, 28 August 1975, Page 2

Bus cleaners meet union

<XZ INVERCARGILL. Aug 27. Invercargill bus drivers would welcome into their union the two women cleaning contractors at the centre of what might become a national bus drivers’ strike, the president of the Invercargill branch of the Tram wavs Union (Mr J. M. Craig) said today. Mr Craig and Mr A. Rey, the secretary of the branch, told the women that if they did loin the union then the dispute would be at an end. and the threatened strike on September A would not occur. The meeting with the women was not to put any pressure on them, hut to let them hear the union's view and to allow them to

put their own view forward, said Mr Craig. Mr M. McLean, one of the women's husbands, said the contractors would stand by the Industrial Court’s ruling in the meantime. “If they must join the union, then thev are prepared to,” he said of his wife. Mrs June McLean, and Mrs Lorraine McDowell. “Whether the union wins or the Invercargill City ■ Council wins, they don't want to lose their jobs,” he said. If the women join the Tramwavs Union it will demand that thev receive a minimum 40-hour-week wage — which would probably cost the City Council about three times what it now pays to the women, who charge S2 for each bus thev clean.