SECRET
C. P. (49) 143
23RD JUNE, 1949
CABINET
Page 308
177
COPY NO.
31
CIVIL SERVANTS AND INDUSTRIAL DISPUTES
Memorandum by the Home Secretary
it a meeting of the Emergencies Committee on 21st June (E. C. (49) 7th Meeting, Minute 1) it was agreed that I should arrange, in consultation with the Postmaster General and the Financial Secretary, Treasury, for the submission to the Cabinet of the question whether, in the event of an industrial dispute, civil servants should be allowed to refuse to undertake work different from but analogous to that on which they are ordinarily employed, on the ground that by doing this work they would be taking sides in the dispute.
2.
The question has arisen in connection with the plans which the Post Office, in common with other Departments, are making in case there should be a railway strike.
In normal times most long-distance letter mail is carried by rail, but road vehicles driven by postmen, who are members of a manipulative grade, are used generally for con- veying mail over short distances and in rural areas over longer distances. In a railway strike little or no mail could be carried by rail and, apart from the small amount that might be sent by air, all long-distance letter mail would have to be carried by road in order to maintain even a restricted postal service. The Post Office would be able to make available the necessary vehicles for this purpose, but the Postmaster General considers that the Post Office staff of postmen drivers would probably refuse to drive vehicles carrying letter mail normally carried by rail, on the ground that by doing so they would be taking sides against the railwaymen on strike. He believes that it would be inexpedient to contest this attitude on the part of the Post Office staff and he has accordingly suggested that, in the event of a railway strike, vehicles carrying letter maiĺ normally carried by rail should be driven by volunteer drivers drawn both from Post Office staffs and from outside sources. It might be necessary to supplement this provision by calling on Service drivers, but the Postmaster General would hope that this would prove to be unnecessary.
An even more urgent problem than that of the conveyance of letter mails would be the provision of emergency transport to carry telephonists to their exchanges in the event of a strike involving London transport services. An emergency scheme for this purpose is ready to be brought into operation at short notice, but there is the same uncertainty as regards drivers as on the postal side. The intention is to employ engineering workmen on a voluntary basis, as on the occasion of the recent Saturday bus strike, but, should an official transport strike occur, engin- eering staff in the Post Office are expected to adopt the same attitude as their colleagues on the postal side, i. e. they cannot be relied upon to work the service on instruction. Maintenance of a telephone service from the very start is vital and could be effected on an emergency basis (i.e. Government calls only for the first few hours) with skeleton staffs in position for some 24 hage. 308 tf 366 calculated that this intervage0366ufficient to allow the emergency transport service to be organised on the basis of a general call for volunteers.
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