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The RHA comes out of its corner

17th March 1978, Page 41
17th March 1978
Page 41
Page 42
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Page 41, 17th March 1978 — The RHA comes out of its corner
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

AT PROMPTS this article le recent spate of editorial ter and correspondence 7ommercial Motor which ms to suggest that the erences of views held by nbers of the Road Hau

Association on certain es are quite suddenly so e and so irreconcilable as mount to what have been :ribed as rifts.

If course, there are rifts. re always have been and a always will be rifts in the

1.

. is a large, heterogeneous y of hauliers organised by liers for hauliers and it is ;tantly confronted with the cult task of reaching deciis on an ever-increasing ber of issues on which nbers, either for ideological >ractical reasons, cannot ws agree or, in respect of ah, no compromise is pos ts members, operating in an nsely competitive industry, business men and women >wing a difficult occupation ch requires determination, ng will and individualism, en people with these qualand temperaments express NS they do so with great dour and firmness and they lot quickly or easily change r views.

ks business people and the prietors of their own busis, they daily face situations ihich decisions are made and implemented immediately and without argument. That sort of person is usually impatient with, and feels frustrated by, the proceedings of committees, even of those committees to which he has been elected.

That's why meetings of subareas, areas and functional groups are no mere debating societies, why the process of formulating the Association's policies is sometimes difficult, why strongly contested arguments spill over into the press and why there is often impatience and discontent when the RHA fails to prevent the passing of undesirable legislation or to get laws changed overnight or to prevent the Government's imposition on the industry of higher costs or its creation of greater difficulties for hauliers.

' That is why the RHA is a lively organisation and why so many hauliers and so many other people, too, take a keen interest in its affairs.

The whole apparatus of local and national committees and functional groups is designed to give every opportunity for all members to express their views and to participate equally, whatever the number of vehicles operated, in the formulation of the Association's policies. Being a thoroughly democratic one, the system, in which some 2,000 members take part, is bound to produce conflicts, the keenness of which is often prolonged, not only because of the fervour with which opinions are held but also because there is always another committee in which the conflict can be extended or renewed.

The alternative would be to create an authoritarian constitution comprising a number of small, appointive bodies. It would make the policy-forming and decision-making processes swifter and, in many ways, more efficient, but it would undoubtedly leave in its wake deep and justifiable resentments and cause rifts infinitely deeper and infinitely more serious than those which develop from time to time out of the controversies evoked under its democratic system.

The differences in members' views are not polarised between small operators and large operators. For example, in the controversies arising out of current issues such as capacity controls in the hire or reward sector of the industry, the compulsory fitting of tachographs and tariffication, the opposing factions are equally representative of both small and large firms.

There have been sugges tions, mainly in the columns of Commercial Motor, that the RHA is dominated by the larger firms, This criticism is easily refuted by the fact that many members of the national council and of national and area committees are representatives of small firms. in fact, the composition of these bodies broadly reflects the structure of the Association as a whole. It does not fully reflect that structure because the large element of owner-drivers cannot spare the considerable amount of time and selfless work which membership of the Association's committees demand.

• Under the recently reorganised National Tipping Service, however (and it is within this organisation that the interest of numerous owner-drivers lies), regular meetings are held in the evenings when these operators can and do attend and when they take full part in the discussions.

The Association appreciates that owner-drivers operate in spheres other than tipping work and it therefore provides them with every opportunity to attend meetings of sub-areas, almost all of which are also held in the evenings.

Contrary to the assertions of some Commercial Motor columnists and some of its correspondents, owner-drivers are not regarded by the Association as a race apart. They are properly regarded as the operators of vehicles for hire or reward sharing a community of interest with other operators whatever the scale of their operations.

All the services and help and advice they require are available to them as they are to all operators through the Association's fifteen area offices and its head office. In fact the smaller firms require and receive more advice and assistance than do the larger firms.

It is often contended that some owner-drivers — ownerdrivers in this context being those people who drive the only vehicle they possess — have no wish to operate additional vehicles. Theirs, it is said, is a way of life, which holds out a prospect of freedom of decision and action not enjoyed by employed drivers.

It is also contended that they prefer such freedom to their previous work as an employed driver, despite the fact that the latter often receives a higher remuneration (especially when the true costs of haulage operations are fully evaluated) and enjoys not only enormous protection under recent labour relations legislation but also a distinct advantage as contributors to the national insurance scheme.

Presumably, it is this type of operator, the owner-driver, apparently without ambition, who is being induced to join owner-driver associations.

It is not at all clear what services such associations could provide. In order to conduct their businesses knowledgeably and responsibly, these operators, as do all operators, need Road Way and the Haulage Manual.

They need advice and help on numerous aspects of haulage operations. They need hire purchase and insurance facilities and legal aid. They need record books, maintenance forms, conditions of carriage, pro-forma memoranda of agreements, carnets, CMR notes, the benefits of the "Vehicle off the Road" scheme, and help in taking up members' complaints in respect of vehicle repairs among many other things.

Meeting these needs requires a network of offices and a staff and administration of the size and capability developed by the RHA over 33 years.

Those owner-drivers who commenced operations after January 1, 1975, will also require the help which is provided inexpensively in the form of training aids prepared by the education and training committee in conjunction with the RTITB and the Group Training Associations to enable them to pass the examination to obtain the Certificate of -Professional Competence.

Commercial considerations may have inspired the idea of owner-drivers' associations. If that is so, then the operators concerned must surely be aware of the considerable assistance they receive, for instance through the discussions on cost increases which representatives of the RHA regularly conduct with large users of transport before those users prepare and issue rates schedules. The rates may not be as attractive as the operators would wish — few rates ever are — but they are undoubtedly more remunerative than they would be if the Association did not discuss movements in costs with the customers concerned and produce detailed figures which, usually after considerable argument, the customer accepts as justifiable. The RHA also produces costing booklets describing the means by which operating costs should be evaluated and regularly publishes information on cost movements.

Several co-operative groups of owner-drivers and small operators have been formed with the help and encouragement of the RHA. There is scope for the development of more groups, but while the RHA will always stimulate and assist in their formation, such action can be taken only where and when the operators concerned request It.

It is highly questionable whether the majority of ownerdrivers accept that the ownership and driving of a single vehicle represents the ultimate extent of their participation in the work of the road haulage industry. Most of them have the sensible and laudable ambition to acquire additional vehicles, ambitions which, with the benefit of RHA membership, many fulfil.

In fact, many medium and even large fleet operators prominent in the industry today began as owner-drivers. These men had the ambition and determination to overcome the then considerable obstacles presented by a system of licensing under which they had to establish, against the objections of the railways and of other hauliers, proof of the need not only for additional vehicles but for a change in the scope of their work.

Under the present licensing system there are no such obstacles and, in a more favour able economic situation, there will be new unfettered oppor

tunities for expansion which.

make it very doubtful indeed if any owner-drivers will wish or even continue to be eligible for membership of small, new associations which cannot possibly match the full range of services provided by the RHA.

But whether a person is an owner-driver content always to restrict his scale of operation, or an owner-driver with greater ambitions, he cannot fairly or reasonably ignore the fact that, helped gratuitously by other operators both small and large, the RHA carries out an immense amount of work in its representational role.

For example, it makes representations to, and is con sulted by, the Government on such subjects as track costs, motor taxation and in the very wide field of transport legisla tion. Legal cases are brought to establish or test principles of law. The Association opposes increases in licence fees and other tolls. It opposes, too, traf fic orders which would handicap or prevent the work of goods vehicles and those provisions of Parliamentary Private Bills which are inimical to the interests of all hauliers.

The Association works hard in its public relations, a difficult area since the public and politicians constantly make clear their antipathy to the lorry. The antipathy has not been overcome, but that some success has been achieved is apparent from the Government's acknowledgement in its White Paper on Transport of the vital role played by lorries in distributing the nation's goods and of the fatuity of demands to organise any significant transfer of goods from road to rail.

In the commercial field a great deal of effort has been put by the Association into esta blishing the true costs of replacing vehicles and the in adequacy of current haulage rates to meet those costs.

The serious difficulties which all hauliers find, or will find, in replacing vehicles, have been brought to the attention of the Government and of customers and are the subject of continuous representations and of .publicity generally in the Association's relentless struggle for the situation to be remedied through rates increases or special tax reliefs.

Some owner-drivers, even though Road Way fully and regularly reports most of the Association's work, may not appreciate the full extent of the representational role of the Association. They may hold the very narrow view that the value of membership of an association is measured only in terms of the direct tangible benefits they obtain as individuals. And yet, if the Association neglected its representational role, there is very little doubt that they would join in the inevitable clamour for the "voice" of the industry to be heard.

Judging from views recently expressed in the technical press, probably the two current discontents of small hauliers arise, firstly, out of the recent decision of the Association to withdraw its numerous rates schedules and, secondly, out of its inability to obtain the amount of publicity which, understandably, all members think the industry deserves.

There is no doubt that under the Restrictive Trade Practices Act the rates schedules prepared and issued by the Association were in law, though probably not in fact, restrictive. There is no doubt either that some members think that the schedules should have been defended in the court. Had there been the slightest prospect of success in such litigation then, irrespective of its cost, the national council would have authorised it. The national council also had to bear in mind that two other categories of "agreements", namely those consisting of schedules compiled by large transport users in consultation with the RHA and the RHA's conditions of carriage, would also and at the same time have had to be defended in the court.

As it is, the Office of Fair Trading still have these two categories of "'agreements" under consideration and if they are considered to be restrictive the Association will have an opportunity to decide whether or not to contest that view.

Finally, reference must be made to members' desires for more and more effective publicity of the RHA's work. As operators in a vitally important industry they would naturally like to see the RHA as widely known as the CBI and the TUC. They would like to see the Association's leaders appear frequently on television and their names and photographs featured in the press.

These ambitions are unattainable. Unlike the CBI and TUC, the Association is not involved in all the many complex economic and political issues which cause Sir John Methven and Len Murray frequently to go to Downing Street and the press and television to give a running commentary on their gyrations.

There are no leaders of trade associations whose names are instantly or widely recognisable by the public. Even in the case of the Department of Transport, which has a large information and public relations section, many members of the public and, we suspect, even some hauliers don't know the name of the Secretary of State for Transport.

In the short space of this article it is impossible fully to describe the organisation of the RHA and to correct all the misapprehensions about it and all the criticism of it. What be said, without contradic is that the RHA does succe( protecting and furthering interests of professii hauliers. Its work is well kn to Ministers and to officia central and local governr who consult it, to the m which persistently seek: views and to trade and indi and the public v appreciating its reputat check on firms" member. before entrusting goodi them.

And its work is well knovs Commercial Motor. Just ov year ago John Darker, knows a great deal about road haulage industry and Road Haulage Associat examined its work and on isation. His praise for them unqualified. He found evidence of permanent rifts vveen small and large opera and, finally, he declared: RHA exists to serve the indui Non-members, roll up, roll L


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