Page:Engines and men- the history of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. A survey of organisation of railways and railway locomotive men (IA enginesmenhistor00rayniala).pdf/130

doing your interests would not be best served by the adoptions of the same:—

• 1.—Interview the various locomotive superintendents and directors that all companies' men may have similar conditions of service, viz.: ten hours day and eight hours overtime, and each day to stand by itself.
• 2.—A week's work to be guaranteed to all men if fit and ready for work.
• 3.—That all Sunday work, i.e., from twelve midnight Saturday to twelve midnight Sunday, be paid for at the rate of seven hours per day, and exclusive of the week's work.
• 4.—That nine hours be allowed off duty as far as practicable.
• 5.—That each man be appointed by seniority of service.
• 6.—That 150 miles constitute a day's work for passenger trains, all over that number to be paid for at overtime rates.
• 7.—Passenger drivers, 8s, per day; first year drivers, 6s.;second year drivers, 7s.; fifth year drivers, 7s. 6d.; passenger firemen, 5s, per day; other firemen, first year, 4s.; second year, 4s. 6d.; fifth year, 5s., until passed as a driver; sixpence per day extra in London for both drivers and firemen.

The views of branches are invited upon this programme.

Very naturally, the branches decided in favour and allowed the Select Committee to go by default. But the Executive had, in my view, made a mistake, and I fancy the Executives of 1910 to 1920 would have gone a firmer way about it. They would have asked for a programme to be endorsed to lay before the Committee, along with trenchant evidence of enginemen's conditions, which were grievous in the extreme in those days. An opportunity was missed, and, as a result, evidence which might have been on record is not on record. The letter to branches says that the agitation existed in several industries, and it should have been backed up. It advises branches to obtain interviews with directors who would not recognise the Society, and, following on the decision, it sharply