FORD FLEET
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With regard to the story headlined "Ford's fleet under review" (CM4-10 Nov), I wish to bring to your attention a serious error in the reporting on the Ford truck fleet at Dagenham.
Your article states, incorrectly, that "only one of the plant's 300 truck drivers is not white and he was taken on after the out-of-court settlements".
The fact of the matter is that the ethnic profile of the Truck Fleet at Dagenham mirrors the profile of the rest of the Ford Truck Fleet nationally before the "out-of-court settlements", and the position remains roughly the same to date—ie 244 drivers of articulated vehicles, of whom seven are tom ethnic minorities.
Furthermore, the article states, "the appointment of an independent examiner to assess all potential recruits should have already helped to satisfy most of the review requirements". What in fact happened was that independent assessors were brought in to work alongside our own assessors and they have found no cause to change the assessment procedures that had been in place for some time prior to the unfounded allegations of racism levelled at the Dagenham Truck Fleet drivers and their representatives.
Nor has their input done anything to change the ethnic profile of the truck fleet, which we believe is no different to the ethnic profile of the road haulage industry as a whole.
Commercial Motor is a respected journal in the road transport industry, making the inference that could be drawn from the inaccuracies in this report all the more disturbing. John Cheshire, Senior Shop Steward, Dagenham Truck Fleet Shop Stewards.
• The information in the article was supplied by Ford; it seems reasonable to assume that the company knows who is driving its trucks—Ed.