MPs reject driver shortage, crap pay and conditions to blame

[rjan]

Carryfast:
Ironically I think you’ll find that the government’s real wish and agenda is to smash the UK road transport industry in favour of rail and what rail doesn’t want goes to cheap rate foreign operations.

And then you look at the relentless attacks on the rail workers and their unions, and the proliferation of subcontractors and privatisation, and you’d think they were trying to smash rail, too. They’re preparing to sack half the on-train workforce there and make drivers do more without help.

In truth, the common denominator is smashing workers, of drawing all the goodness out of any working occupation. Road transport already is smashed for workers. They didn’t smash it for the benefit of rail - they’re smashing rail as well.

[captain_caveman_76]

theguardian.com/society/201 … edecessors

The issue of poor pay isn’t unique to the transport sector, it’s across the board.

[freight_dog]

OVLOV JAY:
I’ve been saying it for years. The last time there was a “shortage”, circa 2003, the rates were pushing £18 per hour, in certain places. The wtd has hit those same places hard, with blue chips trying to restrict drivers to 10 hours a shift, with wages nowhere near the ones I stated.

When I was a sainsburys Waltham point, we had Mancs, Scousers, Jocks, Welsh, you name it. And when they couldn’t get any more, they offered a pound an hour more than Tesco. Now, it’s a non stop stream of Eastern European labour that can live on nmw, where the indigenous workforce simply can’t put food on the table at those rates.

The worse thing we ever had was the introduction of the nmw. Wages would never have fallen so low without its introduction. It’s become a benchmark wage, and until people start offering more than the firm round the corner, like the old days, you’ll never turn it around.

I left in 2004 and remember seeing those rates. I came back briefly to driving a few years ago and the hourly rates were only £1 an hour more than when I left ten years prior. So in real terms with inflation, less. Nights out money (if you include that sort of thing) was exactly the same as 2004. Coming back after ten years a few things stuck out (this was in east Lincolnshire):-

1/ In 2004 not enough drivers in the area. 2014, loads of drivers floating about with a licence. Majority work force from Europe. Rights or wrongs aside, just my observation.
2/ 2014, Lorries easier to drive.
3/ In 2004 adverts everywhere from real hauliers. In 2014 adverts all primarily bar a few were agency, and self employed offerings at that.

[rjan]

dieseldave:
Some posters have mentioned that employers could do more, and that’s true in many cases, but let’s remember that it’s very often the customers who dictate the haulage rate.

The simple equation is that:

A free economy + market forces = take it or leave it.

Then hauliers (or workforce unions) need to be as big as the customers. Indeed, “customers” need to be start being perceived for what they really are, employers.

When Tesco outsources to Stobarts, for example, they aren’t a “customer for haulage services”, they are just the same old employer with the workforce now at arms length, and with the legal right (unlike before) to lay off the workforce if it doesn’t comply with their demands.

The very fact that people talk about the market prices with an air of inevitability and immutability shows that the bosses’ trick does work. If you want large “customers” to pay more, you do the same as before when you wanted the employer to pay more - workers unite, and you threaten that if the increase is not paid, then work will stop and all relevant workplaces will be besieged.

It is the counterpart to the threat that bosses always make to workers - work for the rate we offer, or you’ll lose the roof over your head and your kids will be in rags.

[rjan]

OVLOV JAY:
When the NMW came into force, I was unloading containers on £4.75 an hour. The week after, I was doing it for £3.50 an hour. I left in disgust and the following week I was moving timber in a furniture factory, on £3.50 an hour

But if you were willing to work for £3.50 all along, how did you ever get £4.75? Why did the employer ever need to pay you so high? And how did they replace you at £3.50, if presumably they hadn’t been able to before?

What we’ve seen in haulage, is the “unskilled” element is now foreign labour, and new drivers, who are grateful of a job, any job.

Well the old union men keep selling the young down the river, so what do they expect to see, other than fierce, lower-wage competition for their jobs from the young (which the bosses are happy to indulge)?

[carryfast]

Rjan:

Carryfast:
Ironically I think you’ll find that the government’s real wish and agenda is to smash the UK road transport industry in favour of rail and what rail doesn’t want goes to cheap rate foreign operations.

And then you look at the relentless attacks on the rail workers and their unions, and the proliferation of subcontractors and privatisation, and you’d think they were trying to smash rail, too. They’re preparing to sack half the on-train workforce there and make drivers do more without help.

In truth, the common denominator is smashing workers, of drawing all the goodness out of any working occupation. Road transport already is smashed for workers. They didn’t smash it for the benefit of rail - they’re smashing rail as well.

To be fair the simple comparison and choice between a train driver’s duties and wage v truck driver is a no brainer.

With an unarguable stated policy aim within government of shifting freight from road to rail using punitive financial and regulatory methods being part of that.Those punitive aspects imposed on road transport then obviously hitting those employed in the industry like drivers in the form of wage cuts which reflect the level of massive fuel taxation and unnecessary hours put into the job owing to artificially imposed slow speeds and driving time limits.With the lose lose situation of 15 hour shifts and the loss of much of the better quality longer haul work leaving just local distribution type zb work as part of that.

[ovlov_jay]

Rjan:

OVLOV JAY:
When the NMW came into force, I was unloading containers on £4.75 an hour. The week after, I was doing it for £3.50 an hour. I left in disgust and the following week I was moving timber in a furniture factory, on £3.50 an hour

But if you were willing to work for £3.50 all along, how did you ever get £4.75? Why did the employer ever need to pay you so high? And how did they replace you at £3.50, if presumably they hadn’t been able to before?

What we’ve seen in haulage, is the “unskilled” element is now foreign labour, and new drivers, who are grateful of a job, any job.

Well the old union men keep selling the young down the river, so what do they expect to see, other than fierce, lower-wage competition for their jobs from the young (which the bosses are happy to indulge)?

You misunderstood my point. I was on £4.75 before the NMW was introduced. The employers, agency who represent most unskilled NMW warehouse workers, dropped the rate as soon as it was introduced. I didn’t stand for it, leaving the following week. Unfortunately, every employer taking on unskilled labour were all paying NMW by that point

[carryfast]

Rjan:
Well the old union men keep selling the young down the river, so what do they expect to see, other than fierce, lower-wage competition for their jobs from the young (which the bosses are happy to indulge)?

Blimey that’s an unbelievable and unfair slur.In my experience the strongest union ethic was always led by the older ( than me ) generation with that WW2 one being unarguably and not surprisingly the best there’s ever been and ever will be in that regard.If anything they were let down by the following generations especially those who came through the Callaghan and Thatcher indoctrination process.The fact is the younger generations were progressively indoctrinated with the Thatcherite ideology and unlike the older ones they were all to keen to go along with it.Which explains the bs contradiction contained in your comments there.

[evil8beezle]

NMW sets the precedent of acceptability, releasing any employer of guilt or social responsibility to its workforce…

Most workers now rate a good job as NMW plus a quid or 2!

[albion]

Evil8Beezle:
NMW is the starting benchmark EVERY employer wants to be able to pay, and ONLY when they can’t achieve the desired results from that will they contemplate offering more! Why would they do anything else?

No it isn’t. Last year I was paying close to a pound more than one of my main competitors. Now he’s paying around the same, but the fringe benefits still aren’t as good as ours. We had a good year last year, so instead of the usual £100 Xmas bonus, it was £500 for every driver, be they van or Class one. I didn’t have to pay more than usual or I could have chosen to up. it by £50.00. I pay through breaks, guarantee 40 hours, even when the works flat and I’m losing money, because that’s the deal when you work for me, you do the best for me and I will do the best for you. Sometime I do wonder why I do more than I need because apparently all employers just want to have you over a barrel.

Rjan can waffle on about employers being united for all .he likes, but that’s theory versus reality. I gave up chasing work years ago and now it either comes to me or it doesn’t, but other companies would literally stab their own grandmothers in the back for more work. If I got .together with the other four hauliers in my sector and proposed an increase in rates, which would translate into higher pay, that would be a cartel and before long some new crowd would weigh up that the barriers to entry were no longer so great, against the potential profit, if only they paid their drivers less and charged a bit less…

As for recouping training fees, say I take someone on and put him through his license, plus the other training we do, then have to pay him for a few months whilst he does bits and pieces of work, but not the stuff that pays, I have a bill of 5k plus. Then he decides to go elsewhere. He’s got no money, his house is rented, his cars on a lease, how would I recoup the money. Send the bailiffs round for his telly, accept a fiver a week because he can’t pay more because the CSA get first dibs. I’ve been bitten before on that one and am cautious now. Fool me once and all that.

[evil8beezle]

You were not in my thinking Albion, as there are fringe exceptions.
I’m thinking about the big boys that effectively set the benchmark…

[munchkin]

I presume most posting here have read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists? If you haven’t, do.
Doesn’t the whole setup seem strangely familiar [emoji57] .
Written over a century ago by a working man it shows how far we came in the 20th century. Unfortunately with zero hours contracts, over reliance on agencies and the working class generally being treated as job fodder we seem to be regressing to a level that must gladden the heart of your average Daily Mail reader.

Sent from my X17 using Tapatalk

[albion]

Evil8Beezle:
You were not in my thinking Albion, as there are fringe exceptions.
I’m thinking about the big boys that effectively set the benchmark…

I’m coming over all sensitive wallflower Beezle

[evil8beezle]

albion:
I’m coming over all sensitive wallflower Beezle

Are we internet dating now?

But on the topic: My preference on employer is very much a small outfit where hopefully the ethos is “in to together”, as i’m not sure I could survive a soulless corporate monster long term, I’ve done that before in another industry…

No that’s not a sad desperate plea for a job, my ethics prevent me from dating the boss!

[harry_monk]

Thirty years ago, if you drove a truck you could afford to buy a five-bedroomed detached house. Nowadays if you drive a truck you’d struggle to be able to afford to rent a bedsit. Nuff said.

[gordon_50]

I was in Dubai a couple of years ago and all truck drivers (as well as all other manual workers) are Indians, Pakistanis or other immigrants, and I can see the same happening here before very long.

[carryfast]

Harry Monk:
Thirty years ago, if you drove a truck you could afford to buy a five-bedroomed detached house. Nowadays if you drive a truck you’d struggle to be able to afford to rent a bedsit. Nuff said.

To be fair I was on less than 200 pw gross for class 1 night trunking at that time,having at that almost doubled the wage I was getting working as a class 2 council driver,working for a reasonable unionised employer and was still only earning around 375 pw gross 15 years later in the same job.With the four bed semi house next door at the time having already sold for around £75,000 in the mid 1980’s and our three bed one then selling for almost £90,000 10 years later.

IE the difference was that the exceptional high paying interesting jobs were less of an exception and not mostly lost to under cutting foreign operations.But the average ones were still just that average.But with those exceptional best jobs still often being a case of dead mans shoes or luck or knowing the right people to get into them.

[juddian]

I had my best relative earnings in the 80’s, mind you that was for a fair amount of hours and i was lucky enough to slip into one of the best night trunks going on 4 on 4 off paid proper continental shift rates.

I wonder how many of those drivers who bought 5 bedroom detached houses lost them when interest rates peaked at around 15%, cheers Maggie, most of us realised we weren’t bloody footballers or celebs so set our sights at more modest houses we could afford should the crap hit the fan, as it always does.

General haulage always has paid ■■■■ poorly generally, with having to work excessive hours or use night out pay as wages or if doing europe bring in the booze and ■■■■ to make the money up, thats the same now as its always been, you have to diversify inot other fields to get decent money for a reasonable working week, i suspect it will always be thus.

[rjan]

OVLOV JAY:
You misunderstood my point. I was on £4.75 before the NMW was introduced. The employers, agency who represent most unskilled NMW warehouse workers, dropped the rate as soon as it was introduced. I didn’t stand for it, leaving the following week. Unfortunately, every employer taking on unskilled labour were all paying NMW by that point

I accept your account. What it doesn’t explain is why you were being paid £4.75 to begin with. If the employers can just knock £1.25 off the rate and not see any difference (no strikes, no shortages), then what stopped them dropping the rate beforehand?

In particular, what stopped them dropping their rates in unison?

As I say, the best explanation I can come up with is simply that the bosses finally realised they were overpaying above the rate necessary for the market, and the NMW acted as a starting gun for them to drop rates in unison.

The reason they would have got into a position of overpaying isn’t clear. Perhaps a hangover from days when there was a local shortage or better union solidarity, and managers with no incentive to upset the applecart hadn’t revisited the rates since (and perhaps, without the starting gun of the NMW, any who had tried to drop rates unilaterally had created unacceptable churn and an exodus to those still paying better).

Perhaps this is the explanation, that NMW created payroll pressure (so managers had an incentive and an excuse to take risks), and it operated across the market at once (so managers were talking with each other about the problem, and knew what others would be doing at the same time). In this way, they were able to get the rate down to its market level, without risking excessive churn and poaching.

Obviously, this is not the same as saying that NMW caused the drop. It realised a potential that was already there. The potential for employers in a sector to act in unison is frequently there - what backstops it is the threat of shortages (of new recruits or existing workers who leave for other sectors or occupations) or industrial action by existing workers.

Since that threat of industrial action obviously wasn’t there to backstop wages at £4.75, the underlying market rate silently fell away for some reason, but the rate you were being paid remained higher until there was a trigger for managers to drop the going rate back to the lower market rate.

[ovlov_jay]

We had no NMW when it was £4.75 an hour. It was the going rate for unskilled work at the time. It was take it or leave it rates. When the NMW kicked in, the agencies in the area all decided that was now the going rate. They have never changed since. Only increasing with legislation. And with most employed unskilled staff on decent rates, it’s no surprise firms have opted for prodominantly temporary staff.