CONFIDENTIAL
'Page 89 of 260
ONFIDENTIAL
The management of the London Underground was meeting the railway unions later that day when it was likely to make a revised pay offer of 8.5 per cent, provided that the unions agreed to enter into serious negotiations on the Action Stations programme, to accept new arrangements in respect of driver-only trains and to end their industrial action. Unless a settlement was obtained, a one-day strike on the London Underground would go ahead the following Wednesday. On London Buses, a pay settlement had been eached with the drivers and platform staff at 8.4 per cent: the gineers remained in dispute, but their action was unlikely to
se serious difficulties.
SECRETARY OF STATE FOR HEALTH said that the BR offer of 8.8 percent had serious implications for negotiations in the National Health Service Whitley Council on pay for ambulance drivers and a variety of other National Health Service (NHS) staff. Ancillary workers had already settled at 6.5 per cent and a settant had also been reached with administrative and clerical orkers. The National Union of Public Employees (NUPE)
presented ambulance drivers had recommended acceptance
6.5 per cent offer. However, this recommendation
been rejected by progressively larger majorities in lots of ambulance drivers, and the union was now threatenustrial action including an overtime ban. There was little not that the BR offer had strongly influenced the NUR. The situation was particularly difficult because there are some NHS staff, such as medical laboratory scientific
s and pharmacists, who had a more impressive claim than
e ambulance drivers but who were currently considering of
6.5 per cent. NHS management was minded to maintain a fine on all its offers, but the BR offer and the sensitive pasion occupied by the ambulance drivers meant that it might prove very difficult to settle at 6.5 per cent. The fact that recommendation of the RSNT could unions for recourse to arbitration
BR offer had followed a
ead to pressure from the
the ambulance service and
other disputes, with potentially unhelpful results.
In discussion, the following points were made:
a. It was very important that the 8.(percent offer by BR did not become the basis for pay settierents industries. The increase in the Retail Price now levelled out but the prospects of it fait
helped by inflationary pay awards which in
by BR would feed through to ticket prices.
in other
dex (RPI) had would not be of that
b. The RPI would also be adversely affected by e of 10p in the price of beer announced by the brews
Government's decisions in the wake of the report of the
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CONFIDENTIAL