Having just come back into trucking after a two year hiatus, I am now confronting the WTD head on like the rest of us.
Having read some of the posts on here it would appear that most companies are embracing this thing from the point of view of the driver. However, my own company is not.
We have a total of 75 drivers - driving skip wagons, roll-on-offs, tippers and a number of curtainside artics. We were TOLD of a meeting that was taking place on Thursday night just gone and who OUR representative at that meeting would be…as a new-start I hadn’t a clue who the guy was and he didn’t appear to be very amiable or approachable. On these counts I wasn’t too enamoured.
At the meeting it was said that for the likes of us skip drivers that time spent netting, un-netting, waiting to get on-site and writing up paperwork etc WILL NOT be classed as Working Time, but a Period of Availability - which flies directly in the face of the WTD.
We are all being given new time sheets from next week whereupon we will be expected to write down every activity we get up to on each and every job. So, if you carry out 8 or 9 skip exchanges in a day you will be doing a helluva lot of writing. But the ironic thing is all these non-PoA’s WILL be considered as PoA’s. As a collective body the drivers have decided we will not be doing this - we will fill in the same information as we do now.
The company is also pushing for the reference period to be 26 weeks instead of our hoped for 17 weeks. We will be ballotted on this and we have all decided to vote for 17 weeks but the company has been accused of ballot-rigging in the past!!
There is no Trade Union on-site…
The company is adamant that the 48 hour working week will be adhered to strictly but there will be no increase in pay-rate. They will be bringing in new bodies to fill-up and clean the wagons so we won’t be hanging about at the end of the day adding extra valuable minutes to our working time. It looks to me and the rest of the drivers as if we are about to be shafted.
Any advice from you guys and girls about what sort of action we should consider and whether the company is within it’s legal rights to act in this way■■?
Kind Regards,
Paul-D.