Firstly, I should point out that although my father, a printer by trade, was a strong trade unionist I was neither very pro nor very anti trade unions.
Story 1:
When driving for Cadwalladers, if I came into the UK with a load for eastern England, I would often be told to go to Ross Foods in East Anglia and take a load up to the northwest which would put me into a better position to reload for the continent again.
On one occasion whilst backed up to the loading bay, an employee asked to see my union card. I showed him my ‘Les Routiers’ membership card but as he hadn’t seen one before he took it away and when he came back he said they didn’t accept this card. He said that he wanted to see that I was a member of the TGWU. I said that I’m sorry that I’m in the union that I wanted to be in and not the union you want me to be in.
People have said in the past that Les Routier was more of a club than a union…I don’t know, what do you think? Anyway, I was told that they wouldn’t load me and to pull away from the loading bay. I then phoned the office to tell them what had happened. One of the transport managers, Les (a.k.a possibilities) suggested that I get to the nearest TGWU office and join. I asked him who would be paying the dues. He said that I would be and it would be in my interests to join anyway. I told him that I failed to see that. He said that it is for my benefit. I disagreed and said that it was not my lorry but Cadwallader’s and to my way of thinking it would benefit Cadwalladers not me and that I objected to management trying to coerce me into joining a trade union.
It ended up with me being loaded somewhere else. Each time I would tip in the s.e. of England and told to go to Ross Foods…“oh! we can’t send you there, I wish you would join the union”. I always said that I’m not refusing to join but I am refusing to pay the dues!
Story 2:
When I was driving for Ridgeway Int. I took a load to Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness. I can’t remember what the actual load was but remember that it was in a 40 ft container and it was one piece of kit. The guys at Vickers said that it would be a problem to unload it. I said that it had gone in through the doors at the back and that was the only way it could come out. I suggested that they drag it out so far using forklift trucks and then to lift it up using their overhead crane.
It seemed that everything had to be booked so they booked the crane and they booked the forklift trucks. The load was chocked inside the container and I said that I’d get my hammer and knock the chocks out. “You can’t do that, driver. That’s a job for the carpenters. If you attempted to do it, we could have the workforce downing tools”. So they had to book the carpenters who happened to be on another job and yes, you’ve guessed it, by the time the carpenters arrived the forklifts and overhead crane had disappeared…booked on other jobs!! I said that the way you lot perform here, it’s a wonder anything gets done. “We’ve got to protect our jobs” was the reply. What was a half hour job…one hour max. to unload the container took nearly all day!
Story 3:
When I lived in Sweden I got a job with a bloke who had this one truck. It was the typical Swedish big rig…rigid with a 40 ft drawbar trailer. What was unusual was it was a DAF 2800. something one rarely saw in the land of Scanias and Volvos. The job entailed driving from Stockholm up into the arctic circle and back twice a week. A round trip of about 2,400 kms twice a week (i.e. a total of 3,000 miles)and it was winter time so most of the journey I was driving on snow and ice.
The truck was already loaded and I set off on the sunday afternoon. He told me to drop off about 25 lightweight boxes for a firm on route and although the firm would be closed as it was sunday, to climb over the low wall and put them under the canopy of the loading bay. Don’t worry about getting a signature. Bloomin’ game that was, getting them off from the top of the main load, over the wall and to the canopy and it was snowing! Anyway, I did that and continued on my journey getting a few hours kip in the early hours of monday morning. My second drop were some drums to an iron ore mine up in the arctic circle. The road up to the mine was a fairly steep hill and I couldn’t get up it on the ice. Eventually a bloody great machine with a bucket on the front, wheels all chained up came down and towed me up the hill as though it was a dinky toy he was pulling up. By the time I got to my final drop at Malmberget they had closed for the day so I had to wait until tueday morning to unload (full load of coca-cola). I reloaded with empty pallets at the same place and headed back south.
I got back to Stockholm about midday wednesday, knackered. The owner was moaning about me being late as I was supposed to be setting off wednesday afternoon having tipped and reloaded for my second trip north so that I would be back in Stockholm by friday evening and he could then tip and reload for me to be ready to set off again on the sunday afternoon of the new week. I told him to stick his job!!
I didn’t get paid and my missus said that I should contact the union. I should add here that nearly all workers in Sweden are in some sort of trade union and I was no exception. They asked for my tachograph cards. I was at first reluctant to show them as I had not had enough hours rest showing on them but they weren’t concerned about that, they just wanted to calculate how many hour’s driving I had done so they could work out the number of hours I should be paid at the set union rate.
They contacted the owner and as he refused to pay me the amount they calculated he owed me, they blacklisted him at the various firms he got his loads from. I eventually got a postal order from him for the full amount but that didn’t satisfy the union. They insisted that payment had to be made via them so that they knew everything was in order before they lifted the ban on him.
So there you have it. Two somewhat negative stories about unions and one positive story. I hope the stories are of some interest to you guys and feel free to comment especially if you happen to take a different viewpoint to my way of thinking.
We came to start offloading and had to put most of it in through a seldom used large roller shutter door, on which the kick-plate had got bent and jammed the door… it was snowing a blizzard and one of the GM blokes said he’d send for the Millwright’s Department to fix it, but 20 minutes later I got hacked off and ‘fixed’ it myself and opened the door to crack on 
you would have thought i’d poleaxed some bugger, the might of UAW Local 686 came to pass but we were then too busy getting on with the job to care much 
Ð¢Ð°Ð²Ñ€Ñ–Ñ (Tavria)
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