Ray Gunter said on Tuesday that he does not intend to deal with unofficial strikes before receiving the report of the Royal commission on Trade Unions -- In a recent speech he said that he was under daily pressure to introduce legislation to deal with "indiscipline of unofficial strikes",
Bank Union to Extend End-Year Strike - by an
. Tndustrial Correspondent. The National Union of Bank Employees has decided that the third: phase of its strike campaign, which is planned to include a large part of London and possibly some City banks during the Christmas period, will be extended to three days, The union said that at least four of the banks affected were involved in strike-breaking activities during the two-day action in Wales on Friday and Saturday which had encouraged the decisions This will effect parts of Lancashire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire and the West Country, a well as London, and aithough the union has not announced the dates it is expected to take place on December 29 and 30 and January 1, with the obvious aim of disrupting end-of-year accounting at the banks. Some 6,000 members at about 600 branches may well be involved. The NUBE has decided to include Manchester in the third rather than the second phase and it expects that anger over the blacklegging will mean more Manchester staff taking action than envisaged two or three weeks ago. Meanwhile the second phase of the union's campaign to win national recogni tion and negotiating rights from the clearing banks will take place on Decemper 8 and 9 with strikes at Doncaster, Bolton, Blackpool and Nottingham. It will involve slightly fewer staff than the 2,800. at 300 Welsh branches who, says the union, stopped work on Friday and Saturday. Mr. Alfred Brooks, gen— eral secretary, said after yesterday's meeting of the executive that the anger and indignation of bank staffs had been aroused during this "extremely success— ful action" because some banks had drafted in staff from other parts of the country. He said that the banks particularly guilty of this were Lloyds, Midland, National Provincial and Westminster. The union is pursuing its complaint with Mr. Ray Gunter, Minister of Labour, and the TUC and envisages that other individual unions, as big customers of the banks, could bring pressure to bear to try to prevent this happening again. Mr. Brooks gave notice that if this action was repeated members would be in— structed to refuse to handle transactions started by "blackleg labour." National Provincial and Midland denied that they had tried to break the strike, but Lloyds admitted they had used inspectors to fill the gaps at some branches as they had felt an obligation to their customers. They said they did not regatd this as strike-breaking! No comment was available from the Westminster Banke A Banking Information Service spokesman admitted on Sunday night that 84 Welsh branches had been closed by the strike on Friday and a similar number were affected on Saturday.