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The staffing crisis
Page 27
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Midland Red's concentrated recruiting campaignjust announced, will be watched with great interest, and not only by those in the bus industry. By using television, the Press, posters, brochures and leaflets the company hopes to make good the deficiencies in platform staff which are causing particularly acute concern and are resulting in a worrying increase in complaints about unreliable services.
The general manager, Mr. Womar, says the intention is really to test the labour market by this intensive campaign, and to find out if men are available to make existing services more reliable; the alternative is a serious reduction in some services and the complete withdrawal of others.
The publicity material that we have seen is imaginative and intelligently aimed, and the campaign coincides with the introduction of new rates of pay, providing one-man drivers, for example, with around £20 basic for a 45-hour week. Midland Red's attempts to stop the rot will be watched particularly closely by the many other operators who have similar, or worse, staffing problems.
One-man operation has not proved such a good staff-saver as was hoped; Midland Red itself has put over 200 extra one-man vehicles to work, yet the lost mileage through shortage of drivers has been higher than ever before; and in many undertakings the shortage of workshop staff is even more critical than the lack of bus crews. If public transport is to hold its own, let alone enjoy a revival, something more than an improvement in standards of pay and conditions will be needed to attract the permanent staff to ensure prompt, clean services.
It really is time for the trade unions to face the facts and be ready to accept such proposals as employment of part-time staff and women drivers, and the elimination of those irritating restrictive practices which now add little value to the pay packet but a lot of frustration to the scheduling of services.
Africa on wheels
For staff-hungry managers the situation enjoyed by United Transport Overseas' African bus companies, recounted in a feature in this issue, must be mouthwatering—plenty of staff (quite happy to travel 1,000 miles to a new job), the ability to offer platform and workshop men a good standard of living carrying good status, fares of around Id a mile, and rapidly expanding traffic. It's not all honey, of course, and it's no good UK operators hankering after the old days, good or bad; but the African picture is enough to raise many a nostalgic sigh.
Double challenge
Opening the CM Fleet Management Conference yesterday, the president of the SMMT gave transport operators, and particularly private hauliers, something to think deeply about. He hinted that just because nationalization had passed the industry by, this did not mean that the private sector was no longer vulnerable; it could still be squeezed.
To have to meet the onerous demands of new legislation and, on top of that, • to have to prove by its commercial leadership that it is an irreplaceable section of transport, is for private haulage (and for own-account operators, too) a challenge indeed. That it will be met we have no doubt, so long as "the opposition" plays fair. Watchdogs, notably the trade Press, will be on hand to see that it does.