The Dockers' Wage London dockers have long been negotiating through
a joint sub-committee of the employers and the unions for an improvement in their rates of pay, and agreement has now been reached, for the full restoration of the cuts (restored in part only last December) made in 1981. The method of patient negotiation by which agreement has been reached shows how indispensable to goodwill in industry is a well-organised trade union capable of representing all the men and treating amicably with a representative body of employers. It is to be hoped that similar methods of give and take will enable the railway- men to come satisfactorily to terms with the employers in regard to the demands which they are presenting for the restoration of the railway wage cuts. It is desirable that wherever possible the cuts made in the emergency of 1981 should be restored. But it is fair to remember that the position of the railwaymen before 1981 was excep- tional, and at that time some revision downwards, apart from the emergency, might have been imposed by the condition of the industry.
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