Take a closer look at part-time
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drivers TGWU reply to confederation THE claims made last week by the Confederation of British Road Passenger Transport in a report by Dr Tim Hunt that part-time psv drivers have as goad a safety record as fulltimers are being disputed by the Transport and General Workers Union. This continues the exchanges between the two organisations which were started by TGWU drawing attention to the estimated 50,000 part-time coach drivers employed in Britain (CM August 29).
Larry Smith, secretary of the Passenger Services Group of the TGWU, told CM that he considered the Hunt report to be a superficial examination of the subject. He particularly questioned the fact that only 46 'B' type part-timers (those who had a full-time job) were included in the survey compared to 246 'A' type (those drivers who worked seasonally). Mr Smith said that in his view those figures were unrepresentative of the industry and the accident records of far more '13' type drivers should have been examined. But he said that at present TGWU had no figures of its own with which to counter Dr Hunt's study.
Dr Hunt's study contained the following table showing frequency of accidents per 100,000 man-hours on duty.
Casual drivers Type A are the seasonal drivers, employed for a minimum of 90 days. Type B is the occasional weekend driver for whom coach driving is secondary to some other employment.
Many of the drivers involved in the recent spate of accidents were B type casuals, said Mr Smith. He thought that these people could not possibly compare in knowledge of the vehicle they were driving or their route knowledge to a full-time driver.
He rejected the Confederation's view that the coaching industry could not meet public demand for travel without employing part-time staff, "Coach driving should •be left to the professional," said Mr Smith.
Coach operators—perhaps understandably—do not support the union view on the risks of employing part-timers. Tom McLachlan, general manager of Grey-Green, said that it was impossible •to say whether fullor part-time drivers were in general safer.
Mr McLachlan thought it all depended on the individual. "Some part-timers are very bad risks to employ, but then others are very good blokes who we've employed for years without them being involved in an accident."
A Midland Red spokesman said that their part-time bus drivers were involved in very few accidents. He thought that because many of them drove buses only at the weekends they tended to •be more careful than the regular drivers.