5 reasons lorry drivers leave their jobs

[rjan]

Santa:

Rjan:
For any criticisms I could make of the culture in some workplaces or unions, I’ve never seen a workplace where the workforce did less for their money than the management or the owners.

I have been both driver and management. In every company for which I worked, the managers were putting in more hours than the vast majority of the workforce. When I was first made a TM from a driver, I took a pay cut. As a manager, I often had to take work home at weekends just to keep on top of it; I would lay awake at night worrying about budgets etc. As a driver; once I parked up for the night or the weekend, I could forget the job altogether.

Maybe your experience has been different, but I suspect that mine is more common.

So you left a driving job paying more and with fewer duties, less burdensome responsibilities, and a better kind of work, to become a manager? I simply don’t believe you.

I don’t believe you for one simple reason, which is that no sensible person opts for a pay cut doing a worse kind of work. If you made a mistake you can easily vote with your feet and return to being a driver. You wouldn’t carry on, would you? You’d return to the workforce, or you’d join the workforce’s union and bargain for better terms!

That said, I concede there are many complexities in comparing one job to another, and it’s not as straightforward as comparing hours or hourly rates, but I stand by the statement that managers and owners (as a whole) are never working harder for their money than the workforce.

[mazzer2]

Rjan:

Mazzer2:
Rjan, yes the soviet workers had rights, the right not to travel, the right not to criticise their government, the right not to have free and fair elections they lived in a dictatorship. If the Soviet model was so good why was the Berlin wall built? The numbers leaving this utopian workers paradise were so great that the only ones that would have been left in East Germany were the Stasi.
I would not cross a picket line if the dispute is about pay or conditions however if it is a political strike then I would have no qualms about crossing it

You’re making the error that I’m promoting the Soviet model, when what I’m really doing is merely challenging your propaganda about it.

The Berlin wall was built for a number of reasons. Firstly, the East of Germany was yoked to a regime that was far less economically developed overall, whereas the West of Germany was yoked to the most developed capitalist nations.

Secondly, the West offered inducements - actual reward money - for people to flee into West Germany, and West Germany itself received economic largesse like Marshall Plan money that was specifically designed to undermine the Soviet regime.

The numbers who wished to leave East Germany are probably not dissimilar to the number of Brits who would leave if somewhere more economically developed than Britain existed (especially if they speak the same language at the destination), or if somewhere more unequal than Britain existed and they stood to be on the better side of the inequality.

Millions fled Britain in the post-war years, and so many were carpetbagging to Southern Rhodesia that the British government eventually imposed a travel ban. The Rhodesian government itself also imposed travel bans and capital controls designed to stifle emigration. These were all capitalist regimes, of course.

As for “criticising the government”, try criticising your boss in public, and see what sanctions follow. Look also at what happens to democratically-elected politicians like Corbyn, who challenge bosses’ rule - smeared publicly as a Russian spy and Stasi agent, all of which are absolutely truthless.

One last thing, I’ve got far more respect for someone who crosses a picket line for some genuine political principle, than one who sees it simply as an opportunity for personal gain, the latter of which is totally reprehensible.

The likes of Corbyn would have a better of understanding of workers and what they go through had they spent time running a business and not as career politicians, every election the number of MP’s who have held a job outside of the political bubble gets less and less. As Santa points out it easy to look at the person in the chain above you and think they’re on a cushy number until you have to do the job yourself and then see things you had no idea about when you were further down the chain, a bit like the Lib Dems, spent years attacking governments then in 2010 when the reality of being in power was different and they couldn’t honour all those promises

[rjan]

Mazzer2:

Rjan:
…

The likes of Corbyn would have a better of understanding of workers and what they go through had they spent time running a business and not as career politicians, every election the number of MP’s who have held a job outside of the political bubble gets less and less.

I agree with you that, as a group, the fact that so few MPs within the group experience life as do ordinary people, is concerning. But that is true of all sections of society frankly, and I’m not sure exactly what the solution is.

But as for Corbyn personally, I’m not sure what you think he fails to understand. When he says war veterans should not be sleeping on the streets, for example, is there something businessmen know which changes that equation?

As Santa points out it easy to look at the person in the chain above you and think they’re on a cushy number until you have to do the job yourself and then see things you had no idea about when you were further down the chain

The used-car salesman works hard at being dishonest. I wouldn’t like to have to do his job - I’d find it enormously hard, not only being fairly unpractised in routine deceit, but also finding it morally suspect. The salesman however may find it easier, either because he has no principles, or because his income has reached a level where those principles are for sale with the cars.

And of course there are learning curves in any job. One has to know a knackered big-end from a dodgy head gasket, and how to feed in those bri-nylon rags to settle down a noisy gearbox.

But once you are in the swing of things, most jobs consist predominantly of routine work. It takes years of training just to acquire reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, but once acquired they are not so difficult to apply, even though the illiterate coming to the task for the first time and thinking it trivial would be in for a shock.

Anyway, my argument is not that when I look up I see people with very cushy jobs. For those high enough to have truly cushy jobs by comparison, they will not flaunt them in public anyway, and you will not usually know their names. My argument was simply to reject the idea that management ever work harder for their money than the workforce. If the workforce succeed in making their jobs very comfortable, you can be assured that the jobs of managers are at least as comfortable.

And where industrial relations are terrible and managers’ jobs are terribly stressful, you can be assured the workforce is even more stressed, because whenever there is a strike by workers, there is always one crucial difference which is that management continue to collect their salaries and the workforce do not.

a bit like the Lib Dems, spent years attacking governments then in 2010 when the reality of being in power was different and they couldn’t honour all those promises

You don’t think it’s just because they had no principles to begin with, and the previous attacks were just pantomime?

[winseer]

Juddian:
I’d be very wary of crossing official picket lines, even more so these days, only wants some bugger to recognise you and your name goes on ze list tommy.
Might not make a scrap of difference of course, but you never know what the future will bring, but thinking of it from the job overall if they’re striking its for a reason, if they lose then RM will be yet another wrecked job and you can forget £20 an hour agency rates in the future because the place will be stuffed with foreigners prepared to work cheap and you won’t get a look in because it becomes another version of closed shop.

That’s my point… I’ve already had the “pariah” treatment, so for £19.48ph I’m thinking it cannot get much worse - surely?

I was wondering if the firm are likely to be desperate enough to backpeddle enough to welcome me back there, me thinking that having got work across January and Febuary there THIS year - did me quite nicely, albeit with the raised stress levels trying to duck and dive all the time…

“Have you any idea how unpopular you are here?” I got earlier THIS year - and from a foreign driver “poacher-■■■-gamekeeper” (which full timer drivers seem to have now become btw) didn’t even know beforehand, to boot.

I’m not sure if that meant “You’d be treated better - if you were a complete stranger” bearing in mind I worked there for 22 years full time once-upon-a-time OR the backbiting culture was merely aimed at ALL agency drivers, of which I just happened to be on the receiving end for the critique in question… "We resent you agency drivers 'cos you’re now on better T&Cs than we full timers are - hence try and get rid of you at the drop of a hat by reporting you to management for anything and everything… Off Route, Late Running, Too long to load, not working 318, “Isotrac Violation”, Backtalking former equals, or pushing back against the “rush-rush” culture that seems to pervade now… That’s just the stuff I noticed had changed since being full time there.

[winseer]

These days a “scab” is surely now any working class blue collar bloke who still votes Labour, thinking that they are somehow still electable when they can’t even find their arses with both hands - having dropped the biggest magic money tree of all time, better known as a “Brexit Dividend that only comes about from a No Deal Brexit”…

The “Northern Powerhouse” - are about to rise up - large!

[rjan]

Winseer:
These days a “scab” is surely now any working class blue collar bloke who still votes Labour, thinking that they are somehow still electable when they can’t even find their arses with both hands - having dropped the biggest magic money tree of all time, better known as a “Brexit Dividend that only comes about from a No Deal Brexit”…

The “Northern Powerhouse” - are about to rise up - large!

They’re about to rise up alright. Arses high in the air, ready for a good shafting by a Tory government!

I can’t deny that Labour’s Brexit position lacks any real coherence, but it is the Labour party, not the Brexit party.

[winseer]

It’ll be interesting to see if Northern Workers are prepared to vote Brexit Party - to get rid of the Tories, rather than “Getting Brexit Done”…

The seats that already have a Labour incumbent - might well have Labour voters that are sick and tired seeing their elected MP - do nothing but “Bash Brexit” instead of “Bring down the Tories at the earliest opportunity”.

Corbyn’s popularity has apparently TANKED since he chickened out over “authorizing a snap election” by the suspension of the fixed terms parliaments act…

He didn’t chicken out with May’s crappy deal - so why with Boris Johnson’s apparently “just as crappy” deal??

…if Labour are leaving it until THEY are “ahead in the polls” - then they will find that the TORIES will block that election!!

Gamble, or fold. Politics should NOT be a game for those who say things like “I’m not a betting person but…”

[franglais]

Winseer:
It’ll be interesting to see if Northern Workers are prepared to vote Brexit Party - to get rid of the Tories, rather than “Getting Brexit Done”…

The seats that already have a Labour incumbent - might well have Labour voters that are sick and tired seeing their elected MP - do nothing but “Bash Brexit” instead of “Bring down the Tories at the earliest opportunity”.

Corbyn’s popularity has apparently TANKED since he chickened out over “authorizing a snap election” by the suspension of the fixed terms parliaments act…

He didn’t chicken out with May’s crappy deal - so why with Boris Johnson’s apparently “just as crappy” deal??

…if Labour are leaving it until THEY are “ahead in the polls” - then they will find that the TORIES will block that election!!

Gamble, or fold. Politics should NOT be a game for those who say things like “I’m not a betting person but…”

The Brexit Party stands for Brexit of course, but what are it’s other policies?
Vote them in and what would they do after Brexit?
.
.
Given their strong showing in the EU elections, they could become a major force. Anyone considering voting for them because of Brexit should look at what else they may be condoning.

[juddian]

Until Brexit is delivered we don’t have an independent country any more, so worrying what else TBP might have or not have planned is a moot point, if we don’t get a meaningful Brexit then it really doesn’t matter which bunch of the present clowns holds the keys to number 10.

The last 3.5 years have proved beyond doubt our political system is ruined, of course it’s been like this for decades but most people were totally unaware of just how bad things were and the utter contempt those they voted for held them in, until recently unless you had already twigged just how intertwined the standard MSM (no better an example than the BBC) is with the corrupted system, that has been maintaining a veneer of democracy that has finally been exposed for all to see.
Obviously there are many who still get all of their news and views from the state media machine, but the internet changed all that a while ago and the last 3 years confirmed just how bad things truly are.

If you haven’t already read this bloggers article (calls himself Attic Bug) i highly recommend it, a read that requires more than 30 seconds of concentration but goes a long way to explaining why we have ended up wanting to get out of the EU.
atticbug.blogspot.com/2019/09/

As for lorry drivers leaving their jobs, there was a time when as you became more experienced and proved yourself you could apply for and get jobs with better terms or work that was more satisfying even if it paid the same.
Now, unless you specialise there isn’t much difference at all, and too much of the transport of the country is swallowed up by half a dozen logistics names, when the green death finally goes pop it won’t make a scrap of difference because it will just become another part of one of 4 huge operators, each of which paying within a whisker of each other’s generally poor rates but with slightly different schemes and you arrive at the same take home figure anyway, where the only way driver’s make a decent take home is by working stupid long hours and possibly tramping for the night out allowances.
You might swap jobs and get a Merc instead of a Daf, but chances are you’ll be doing exactly the same boring runs into depressing RDC’s.

I don’t know what drivers who find themselves in these jobs thought they might be getting into when they got their licences, if was the glory of steering a big wagon up the motorway the true reality of that must fizzle out within the week, especially when the wagon becomes dirty or gains its inevitable scars from neglect and is no longer an object of envy by others who can’t look after their charges either.

You get some mickey taking on here about supermarket direct employed drivers and their 48mph cruising speed, but really apart from their tractor unit might be fleet spec restricted to 51.7mph instead of an XLspacesuperstreamhighlinewithabitmoreontop that will do a whole 56.3mph they’ll be pulling stuff out of an RDC instead of taking the same stuff in, then seeing how the supermarket lads are usually paid a better hourly rate for more or less the same job, steering the motor up the road, i don’t see a great deal of difference in the work itself, except the s’market lads will go home after their shift.
Boring? arn’t most lorry driving jobs now? unless you’re one of those clowns who uses the third 6’ 6" width restricted lane in motorway road works to gain half a dozen spaces in the interminable worsening by the hour traffic chaos on our roads.

Maybe the OP question should have been 5 reasons why people become lorry drivers?

[rjan]

Winseer:
…if Labour are leaving it until THEY are “ahead in the polls” - then they will find that the TORIES will block that election!!

The difference is that the Tories are in office and having to govern without a majority. I agree with you though that no election may ultimately occur - the Tory rebels may prefer to just lock up the gears of Parliament for another few years.

[rjan]

Juddian:
If you haven’t already read this bloggers article (calls himself Attic Bug) i highly recommend it, a read that requires more than 30 seconds of concentration but goes a long way to explaining why we have ended up wanting to get out of the EU.
atticbug.blogspot.com/2019/09/

I can see the truth of a lot of what is said in that blog, except where he suggests the problem is “socialist” institutions like the NHS.

The reality is that the market mechanism is the cause of people’s problems, not the solution. You can see for yourself the difference between wages determined by workers competing with each other in the market, and wages determined by workers unionising to assert demands for pay and conditions.

You can see the difference in ticket prices (and government subsidy) between nationalised British Rail and the privatised gaggle we currently have. You can see the difference in rents and the availability of housing between when we had state-imposed rent controls and council house building, to now when rents and building are determined by the market.

I don’t know whether the Attic Bug author is a stool pigeon for radical-right politics, or simply a muddled thinker, but the real danger is that many workers appear constantly to seek to vote for more of what kills them.