More power for the RTITB
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implications for traffic managers
PUBLICATION of the Road Transport Industry Training Board's ambitious plan to extend its influence might have come at a very interesting time had the Transport White Paper been published on Wednesday as everyone believed would be the case.
For it could have been that the Board had received some inside knowledge of the Paper's likely contents.
More likely, the Board realised that with the scaling down of Government funding of teacher training many more millions of pounds of public money would be poured into the vocational training sector. Those first in the queue with the largest plates would deserve the biggest helping of gravy!
By seeking a much larger area of responsibility, the Board is joining forces with those who wish to see transport come of age in the affairs of the nation. The Chartered Institute of Transport sees transport as "a single, though very complex, activity" made up of a number of individual modes, "all linked by the common thread of a body of practical and theoretical knowledge."
The RTITB now catering for around 850,000 staff in professional road haulage, buses, removals and warehousing and motor vehicle distribution and repair reckons that one in six of the employed population — about three million people — work in transport and distribution.
Of course, the Board does not expect to take over these extra millions of people from other training boards or public utilities at the drop of a hat. What it seeks to ensure is that in the vital matter of training standards there is a general level of excellence right across the transport and distribution spectrum.
Ken Turner, RTITB chairman, presenting the document "Transport and Distribution — Meeting the Manpower Needs", referred to the 1964 Act establishing the industrial training board concept. The intention, he said, was to provide adequate training for the future and to ensure that everyone shared in the cost of providing it. "Three quarters,' he said, "steal or borrow from the one quarter who take advantage of the expertise of the RTITB."
The initiative of the RTITB has been welcomed by the Road Haulage Association and by the principal trade unions. Quite apart from the unfairness of certain employers poaching trained staff from those who have paid their whack in training costs, there are vast differences in the quality of training offered in various parts of the transport and distribution industry.
The pass rates in taking the hgv test — to quote a single example — are twice as high for companies in scope to the RTITB as for others.
The Manpower Services Commission or the Training Services Agency would have been better placed than the RTITB to canvass views on a new structure for transport training. Long before either body existed, the Department of Employment or the old Ministry of Labour should have been aware of the manpower and training needs and the desirable level of competence of all employed in transport and distribution.
It was certainly known, when the RTITB was set up, that there would be vast areas of comparable employment spread around a number of other training boards or untouched by the training process at all.
The RTITB can well be proud of coping with the training needs of 848,000 employees in 49,000 companies engaged in 23 major activities within transport. Trebling the numbers would not treble the problems. Indeed, though some more field staff would have to be hired or transferred from other Boards, there are vacant places in many existing RTITB sponsored training activities. Conceivably, ITBs with a minor interest in transport would be well pleased to rid themselves of an incubus which is a nuisance.
But whatever the rational case — and it is a powerful one — put forward for widening the scope and influence of the RTITB, changes in responsibilities tend to be traumatic, especially if they involve diminished powers and a scaling down of empires and cash rewards for the gaffers.
There will be sensitivities to be care fully smoothed over if the RTITB hint that training standards for , drivers, mechanics, clerks and whatever in larg( independent public utilities are less rigorous or effective, than their own criteria.
_ The Board points out that Over the last 50 years the Transport and Genera' Workers' Union — covering much of transport and distribution field — has developed from 86 separate trade unions and now covers not only craft and operative grades but also managerial and support staff.
If such a massive trade union was forced by the logic of industrial history to expand its grip on related industries, does it not follow that the training ambit of the RTITB needs to be widened in the same way?
The TGWU and the RHA are both in favour of a wider remit for the RTITB on which both are represented. Each organisation can hope to profit from expanded training responsibilities for the Board.
RHA members will at last be freed from the persistent naggers who reproach everyone concerned because of the unfair incidence of training burdens. The TGWU and other represented trade unions will hope to find recruitment easier if there is more co-ordination and a higher level of training across a wider spectrum.
The road transport employers will be happy to "see off' what they feel to be unfair competition from those who poa,ch precious skills. The transport trade unions will be happy to see firms who pay low wages and do no training brought up to higher, more equitable, standards. .
The RTITB stresses that transport managers are responsible for one in six of the working population. There is a strong hint that the Board looks askance at the idea that 65 hours of study can equip transport managers with their necessary statutory qualification under the EEC directive.
If the RTITB has persuaded the unions that all vehicle mechanics should possess the National Craftsmen's Certificate, then almost everyone will cheer.
It would be really something if every trade unionist was a qualified person!