Radar men lift ban but go on strike

Press, 31 December 1980, Page 1

Radar men lift ban but go on strike

NZPA Sydney The future of Australia's air services was in grave doubt after meetings of members of the Profess‘ Radio and Electronics Institute yesterday. The meetings decided on new action: a ban by technicians on maintaining radar was to be lifted at 8 p.m. (New Zealand time) so that the technicians could go on strike. Officials of the institute, which is the technicians’ union, said that the situation at airports would be unchanged by the decision. The ban, which had been in force at Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, would be lifted and the radar staff in Sydney and Melbourne would go on strike indefinitely. Although the radar ban would be lifted a ban on repairing important dis-tance-measuring equipment at Sydney Airport, which has created further delays tnere, would remain in force. Two union members would be allowed to remain on duty in Sydney and Melbourne to repair any other equipment which failed if the Public Service Board, the technicians’ employer, met certain conditions. The industrial officer of the institute, Mr Daniel Dwyer, said there had been no radar at airports

for the last two weeks because of the ban and so the strike would not make any difference. The airports could work to their present capacity for the next 48 hours unless the board provoked a shutdown in the meantime. The technicians had given the board 48 hours to make a definite offer to settle the dispute, which is about pay and better work prospects. Only one of three flights through Christchurch was affected by the dispute yesterday: a Qantas Boeing 747 with 127 passengers on board was almost 90 minutes late leaving for Sydney. Two pther flights, one from Melbourne and ,n--other from Sydney, were only 10 minutes behind their scheduled arrival times. The longest delay was that of an Air New Zealand DCIO from Brisbane which was due at Christchurch at 11.25 p.m. on Monday but did not arrive until 3.20 p.m. yesterday, but an Air New Zealand spokesman said that this delav had been the result of bad weather in Brisbane and had had nothing to do with the dispute. Flights to and from Australia through Auckland were delayed for up to several hours yesterday.