Drivers hours regs pre 1985/ or pre EU era

[juddian]

That £10.70 today is probably the same worth as £6 back then.
I’d be interested to know if weekends and bank hols are paid at the same rate.

It could still be a decent little job if you can manage on £500 by just doing the basic 48 hrs, assuming the job is easy enough that is, and the little extras like medicals/DCPC in work time/digi card costs are all expensed as well as the more usual stuff, pension scheme good for the icing on the cake?

Where drivers let themselves down is by co-operating with these changes by working all hours God sends including weekends and bank hols.
You have to make their schemes work to yours, not their, advantage.

[bluey_circles]

from the above two posts, using RPI as the inflationary tool
£6 from 21 years ago would have been £11.03 now so not much difference.
But add in the overtime and the difference is notable
21 years ago; 40 x £6 plus 8 x £9 = £312 (equivalent to £573 now)
Now ; 48 x £10.70 = £513.70

that is a 10.5% reduction in pay in real terms
(and if you compared a 60 hour week it would be a 16.8% reduction in pay)

But if you use average house prices as the inflationary figure, then to compete with Robs £312 from 21 years ago, you would need to be earning £730 now.

[rjan]

Santa:

Evil8Beezle:
Any job is what you make it. Driving has more opportunities than most for maxing the hours, but there is no law that says you have to.

There is a law that says if you want to be paid wages, then you have to do as you’re told by an employer.

And there is an economic law of sorts that says if employers want to earn a profit and stay in business in a competitive market, then they have to keep up with the most profitable firm, which is usually the firm that runs it’s drivers and vehicles the longest and furthest each day.

So there is somewhat of a law that says that drivers must max their hours, provided they want to earn a wage and put food in their mouths, that is.

In the past, drivers have imposed their own laws of sorts, by using various methods to put out of business those who undercut the market by thrashing workers, creating room for profit to be made (and higher prices charged, and better wages and conditions offered) by better employers, but those laws have not been enforced for a long time.

[rjan]

robroy:
I’ve got to admire your Parable like analogies mate you have a knack of painting pictures with words.

Thank you. They say I’m a windbag, so each picture I paint feels like I’ve forced people to consume a thousand words.

I’ve already covered the solidarity sticking together as one option. It won’t happen…end of, for the reasons I have already pointed out.

It has happened in the past, and it has been a necessary step for achieving the relatively high standards of living that now dominate living memory.

What will it take this time? Some villages denuded of young men as in WW1? Another one in ten killed 30 years later in WW2? What will it take this time for people to reject the bullish!t from a Tory war hero and vote in a wishy-washy Labour government promising universal healthcare, social security, and full employment?

How much debt will you let the state impose on your children for access to a low-pay job? How much misery will you tolerate in your old age? How hungry will you let your children go, when your employer says there’s no work this week and you’re on a zero hours contract?

Road haulage today has pretty harsh conditions for pretty poor pay, but it is not yet the worst, and the problem is by no means confined to road haulage. The only iron law is that they’ll keep on taking things from you either until you stop them, or until you’re the mere shadow of a worker and a citizen and have nothing left to be taken from you at all - your life, your health, your home, your culture, all thrown away like inconvenient pennies from the pockets of the powerful.

If you don’t like my ‘‘looking after no.1’’ label, look upon it as ‘‘making the best out of a bad job’’ or even ‘‘damage limitation’’

Does that sound better to you, or are you now going to give me your transport themed version of The Good Samaritan or The Sower of the seeds.

Perhaps “managing decline”, or even more sharply, “participating in deterioration”? Even for the Darwinian struggle-for-survivalists amongst us, going to work every day to sell yours and your kids’ futures is not even looking after yourself or yours.

It’s like people fighting amongst themselves on the death train to Auschwitz, and pretending that if they’ve given someone else on the train a hiding or stolen some of his jewellery, or fought for a spot on the cattle truck where there’s more air to breathe, that they’re on track for success, that they’re winners.

It’s only by having absurdly short horizons, or pretending that managing decline is a successful strategy, that people convince themselves that they’re alright. Many on death trains didn’t seriously believe where they were headed, and many more, even confronted with the truth, accepted death with passive dignity - huddled their children and walked into the shower block, instead of running at machineguns as many later did to successfully escape (risking nothing in the process, since they already faced death either by gas, bullet, starvation, or overwork).