Rail relations ‘typical’

Press, 13 February 1981, Page 9

Rail relations ‘typical’

PA Wellington A lack of knowledge about Industrial attitudes had caused the Commission of Inquiry into Freight Forwarding to misinterpret relations between the General Manager of Railway (Mr T. M. Hayward) and the National Union of Railwaymen, said the union’s general secretary, Mr D. C. Goodfellow.

He described the manage-ment-union relationship as gpical, “No better or worse an any other.” In its report on the freight-forwarding industry, the commission said that while nothing was fundamentally wrong with Industrial relations in the Rail-

ways there was “obvious antagonism and bitterness," between Mr Hayward and some of the union’s officers, especially Mr Goodfellow. This was ’’a substantial impediment to the increasing dialogue between the management and the union that we would like to see," said the commission. Mr Hayward said yesterday he did not intend to enter into a public argument about his relationship with any union or union officials. Mr Goodfellow said, “The commission heard about a row between us but it did not understand that it is quite normal for union officials and management to argue with each other.” He communicated with Mr

Hayward only on a unionmanagement basis and he had no feelings about him one way or another. ■The commission had overreacted, which was a shame because this took away some of the value of the rest of the report, Mr Goodfellow said. “But there is enough there that is positive to enable us to build up an argument for the future. We have been given plenty to think about,” Mr G. Wilson, the general secretary of the Railways Officers’ Institute, said that the relationship between his organisation and the departments management was good if not better than other union-management relationships.