(e)
term
•
workers and it is largely fortuitous that drivers of Post Office vans are classed as civil servants whereas
engine drivers or stokers in gas works are not. It may well seem highly anomalous to civil servants that disciplinary action should be taken against them to enforce the maintenance by them of essential services normally run by other public servants against whom no such action is intended. On the other hand, once the principle that a civil servant may withhold his services, whether in order to press his own claims or in furtherance of a dispute in which he is not directly concerned, is admitted, it is hard to know where to draw the line. A distinction can be drawn between (i) requiring a
civil servant to continue to discharge his normal duties and (ii) requiring him to undertake work of a type analogous to that on which he is ordinarily employed, the need for which arises directly from a strike; and there is also a difference according to whether the additional work is or is not connected with the maintenance of essential services.
7
Applying these considerations to the practical problems with which the Postmaster General is faced, I suggest that the choice lies between the following alternatives:-
(1)
(2)
In the event of a railway strike the Postmaster
General should make it clear that the operation of an emergency transport service for telephonists in London by engineering workmen is essential to the life of the community, and similarly that it is · essential that postmen drivers should carry by road mails which would normally go by rail. He should also make it clear that any worker who refused to undertake the work necessary for the operation of these services would be dismissed.
Such a course of action involves the risk of a widespread strike among the Post Office staff, but it is a question whether this risk is outweighed by the importance of maintaining the principle that in any industrial dispute in which they are not directly concerned civil servants, whatever their grade, should continue to discharge their normal duties and undertake any tasks analogous to their normal duties that they may be asked to perform in order to maintain essential services.
The Postmaster General should deal with the situation
solely on a voluntary basis.
In 1926 recourse was had to voluntary drivers and, although on the present occasion steps have not been taken in advance to organise a general call for volunteers, the Postmaster General is reasonably confident that measures could very quickly be improvised. The telephone service can in his view, be maintained on a skeleton Government basis without a break; on the postal side there would be a short interval before the emergency road transport service started, but it must be recognised that there would be a serious stoppage of mails for a few days. Page 3 of 366
Page 312
-3-
་