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ONCE AGAIN a transport study provides involuntary evidence that the subject has only a superficial resemblance to productivity as it is usually understood in trade and industry. The title of Mrs. Barbara Castle's new Department of Employment and Productivity makes good orthodox sense until it is applied to road transport. The flounderings of the Prices and Incomes Board when it attempts to give heavy advice to hauliers should be sufficient warning of the danger of supposing that a word always means the same whatever the context.
The Road Haulage Association's pamphlet on Productivity in the Road Haulage industry brings in nearly all the relevant aspects and should be a useful starting point for anybody who wishes to make more detailed studies. He is bound to note that efforts to improve the volume of work done in a given time depend on many things besides the worker. The success or otherwise of "transportivity" schemes arises from influences which are often not the concern of the driver and are equally outside the control of his employer.
The pamphlet suggests two objectives for a scheme: "The more efficient use of men and equipment with consequential better service to customers and the introduction of a system of payment which properly rewards men for increased efficiency."
Puzzled!
Management in most other industries might be puzzled by the way in which the second point is worded. The system of payment might seem to present the least of the difficulties. In road haulage it is crucial. Time after time attempts to improve efficiency have been frustrated because there is no way of guaranteeing the proper co-operation of drivers.
The classic situations are well known. If the driver is paid on the basis of the road haulage wages orders—although not necessarily at the bare minimum rates—the tendency is for him to show as much overtime as possible on the records although much of the time may have been spent unproductively.
One rather expensive response is to guarantee payment for, say, a 55-hour week irrespective of the number of hours actually worked. This will bring the driver back to base no sooner than before if he is disinclined to set out on another trip for which he receives no extra wages.
The next even more expensive tactic might be to pay the 55-hour rate for a 40-hour week. The driver on whom this generosity still makes no impression will continue to spin out his journeys for the sake of an even greater overtime payment. The process develops into a game in which every move inspires a counter-move.
To break the spell the pamphlet suggests a new approach. It depends in part upon the introduction of shift work. Here again the outside world has to be taken into account. "Hauliers are prepared to introduce shift work," said the pamphlet bravely, "and offer a round-the-clock service in order to gain the full benefit of their investment in new equipment."
The offer is not so much to the drivers as to trade and industry. There are echoes from the Prices and Incomes Board. The need is to extend the principle of shift work, says the pamphlet, "round-the-clock and round-the-week, to carrying the goods to their point of consumption as a continuation of the production line".
The complaint is that manufacturers, even where they have installed their own shift work system, allow hauliers to collect and deliver only within a comparatively short period during the day and never at weekends. Until customers' premises are open to hauliers at all times, says the pamphlet, "the full potential for improving productivity in road transport, as in trade and industry generally, will not be realized".
The inference is that all customers—and possibly all hauliers—will have to accept the principle of shift work if it is to be of any value to road transport.
A small operator, it is conceded, might have difficulty, but it "could be resolved by co-operating with other hauliers". The possible problem confronting the small trader is not explored although it must be known that attempts to introduce a system of night deliveries tend to break down when only a few customers participate.
The pamphlet insists that docks as well as warehouse and retail outlets will have to be brought into the shift working scheme. This may be a slow process even if it is ever achieved. Only the other day the stevedores' union insisted that there should be no change in the working hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Port of London.
Preliminary
The pamphlet goes beyond the point of shift work although it may be considered an essential preliminary to what is proposed. The long-established practice of paying for so many hours worked, for overtime and for work on Saturday and Sunday should be swept away, it is suggested, as part of a new deal which would ultimately give salaried status to road haulage workers.
This proposal is linked, although not directly, to a new concept of the place of the driver in society. Productivity schemes should encourage him to take an interest in the performance of the firm for which he works. Hauliers have always acknowledged the importance of drivers, says the pamphlet, "and are arranging more and more for discussions and consultations on ways to improve their performance and the utilization of vehicles".
Apparently something like a change of heart is envisaged in the type of driver who is concerned only with the size of his pay packet and is content to waste time as long as he is paid for it.
Wise For obvious reasons it has never been possible to say what proportion of drivers come into this category nor the extent to which the attitude derives from the precepts of the trade unions. Wisely the pamphlet does not venture into this particular by-way.
Reasonably enough it has also had to leave out of account the substantial sections of the road haulage industry where there is either no problem of productivity or the problem is of a different kind from that encountered in the movement of general traffic. The tipping vehicle operator, for example, who seems only recently to have realized what a large proportion of the industry he represents, can control the work of his drivers fairly easily. The man who does a stipulated number of trips in a day can hardly better his performance without breaking the law at some point. Improved productivity in this field will come mainly from the kind of co-operation envisaged at the recent convention of tipping vehicle operators in Buxton.
The pamphlet handles the topic of tachographs with a delicate touch. It is first raised in the section dealing with equipment where it is indicated that tachographs which record speed, mileage time and delay could be an important aid to the proper planning and control of changes in operation made possible by an increase in legal speed limits.
Remote
This seems comfortably remote from the Transport Act. The pamphlet goes on to suggest that information might also be recorded on such items as fuel intake and the payload. A reference to the compulsory fitting of tachographs comes later as part of the same comprehensive requirement "so that the essential information for proper costs can be recorded". There seems to be no foothold here for the protestors.
Setting the record straight is described as the object of the paper. Pronouncements by various bodies, including government departments and the Prices and Incomes Board, have given the impression, it is alleged, that the road haulage industry is backward, complacent and ignorant.
Hauliers may be unduly sensitive. If the impression they resent was ever widely held, which is doubtful, people have long forgotten about it. The one thing they remember, and inaccurately at that, was the decree by the Prices and Incomes Board that hauliers should not put their rates up. Even so most hauliers have been allowed to charge more and it is hard to suppose that the customers have yielded for the delicious pleasure ol wrongdoing.