Buses off road for five hours

Press, 26 July 1980, Page 6

Buses off road for five hours

Christchurch Transport Board buses were out of service for five hours yesterday while drivers held a stopwork union meeting. | The buses started coming out of service after 10 a.m. < and returned about 3 p.m. The secretary of the Christchurch branch of the i Tramway Workers’ Union (Mr M. Dawson) said that the meeting began at 11 a.m. : and finished soon after 1.30 p.m. The drivers then had < their lunch break and signed} on again at 2.30 p.m. !■ He said the union would’ take up the uniform alloca-r tion issue with the board il again, and would meet board! | representatives to discuss the sick leave issue. The branch resolved to oppose strongly the manner i 1

in which the board attempted to alter the sick leave agreement. It decided that if the board tried to repeat the action an t immediate stop-work meeting would be called. The branch agreed to call on the board to use the provision already in the agreement. Mr Dawson said the union conceded that sick leave might be abused but the board had not produced evj. dence of any abuse. I The implications of the [July 2 ban were, discussed ! and the issue was resolved ;to the satisfaction of memibers. Two executive memibers who had defied the union decision to ban collecting fares were not forced to resign from the executive.