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The challenge of scheduling
Page 101
Page 102
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THE replanning of scheduling in the bus industry has not been simplified by the tiresome negotiations with the Minister —though the delays have proved welcome to the industry. No employer welcomes shorter working hours in industry, though almost every British industry has digested substantial cuts in basic hours worked in the past decade. There can be little doubt that the process will go on whether or not Britain enters the Common Market and equally little doubt that employees will use their longest bargaining levers to ensure that a shorter working week is not achieved at the expense of a lighter pay packet.
It is a paradox that the bus industry, which has suffered for so many years from chronic labour turnover, has not looked to shorter working hours as a partial solution. Because of the need to cater for two or three peak traffic periods daily, most urban bus crews have had to accept spreadovers, or long working shifts, as the price of the job.
It would not be difficult to argue that the number of people prepared to tolerate the inevitable disadvantages of busmen's working hours is likely to diminish in the future. Awkward shifts in competing industries are well remunerated and do not involve time-wasting spreadovers. The bus trade unions are unlikely to forget this.
Re-scheduling There are a number of approaches to the re-scheduling problem with which bus managements are now contending. The more radical call for the employment—at least experimentally, to see if the idea is viable—of part-time bus crews. It would be possible, by general agreement, to adopt the kind of flexible manning proposals that have typified the oil companies' productivity agreements,. Fitters—even office staffs if suitably qualified—could man buses at peak periods either regularly or occasionally, to spread the load, if not more economically, at least in such a way as to provide a higher percentage of regular bus crews with more tolerable working hours. Conceivably, some of the radical shift-patterns employed with success in other industries could be adapted for bus work.
On both sides of the industry innately conservative attitudes are the norm. A decline in passengers carried—partly as a result of the general shortening of the working week—has been accompanied by substantially higher operating expenses. As urban traffic congestion has increased service frequencies have suffered; indeed, cancelled services are so customary in some parts that resigned customers seldom complain in the local Press, though public attitudes to fare increases and indifferent service standards are well known.
No spreaders When I talked last week to Mr. David Smith, deputy general manager of Leicester Corporation Transport, he told me that the department was still on a six-day %Tic:irking week. No action was taken when the five-day, 40-hour week was introduced in parts of the industry in 1966. The average level of duty at Leicester has been six days of 7+ hours supplemented by overtime. No spreadovers have been worked since 1932 at Leicester, but overtime, of course, has been an essential feature; currently, only 7 per cent of the bus crews opt out of overtime. Mealbreaks of from to 1+ hours break up early and late shifts but no duty exceeds 9; hours.
Sunday duties from 9.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. or from 4.30 p.m. to 11 p.m. are now worked straight through, crews staying in the vehicles. The requirement to take an hour's break will require some alteration of the Sunday pattern and replacement staff will be necessary. The bus crews, I gather, are not very happy about 'the necessary changes.
At Leicester there is a midday traffic peak to cope with because large numbers of workers live near enough to their jobs to use buses. There is, fortunately, a little slack in the system at present which will ease the midday peak problem. The general approach of the department is by way of new-style duty schedules based on a five-day week and spreadovers in conjunction with a productivity package. Split duties will be involved.
One-manning will increase but Mr. Smith stressed that this is not related to the scheduling problem, though it has a bearing upon it. Currently, some 7 per cent of buses are single-manned and there is to be a further increase of 8 per cent. Eventually there will be 30 one-man vehicles (47 seats, 19 standing) in the fleet of about 200. The morning peak load now occupies 176 buses, a number that falls off to 110 buses by 9 a.m. Hence the relative ease with which relief can be provided in the "valley" period.
The department is by no means convinced that one-man buses are a panacea to Leicester's—or the industry's —problems. Single-manning is possible on Sundays and on certain routes when double-deckers are duplicated. The one-man buses take 4 per cent more running time and are mainly used on the outer circle routes. The use of Bell Punch Solomatic equipment with five fare values and pre-perforated tickets speeds up the operation. Passengers put fare moneys in one tray and collect change from the other tray. New Bristol ECW 3611 single-deckers are shortly to be introduced as replacement for Leyland PD2 double-deckers (62 seats plus 5 standing). Mr. Smith stressed that these new Bristols are not classified as standee-type buses. In fact, standing passengers are comparatively rare in Leicester.
Mr. Smith's attitude to the legislation is that it must be faced constructively. The aim was to achieve a sound basis for future operations. A reduction in the labour content—now 72 per cent of all costs—was imperative but changes made must not encourage more passengers to use their cars. I was frankly surprised to learn that a major problem of the department was the number of bus crews who came to work by car despite the provision of free early morning collection buses. Nothing more clearly demonstrates the problem of "holding" public transport passengers' loyalty.
Difficult as the actual re-scheduling problem may be, Leicester provides abundant evidence of imaginative management of the service as a whole. A new training school with television and videotape equipment for the making of instructional films; the well-publicized remote-controlled TV scanning control room with movable TV cameras monitoring eight city centre congestion points; a highly intelligent streamlining of an overblown filing system, etc; all put the labour relations problem of scheduling into perspective.
Labour turnover But this is not to say that the staffing problem is not acute. With a labour turnover approaching 70 per cent annually, involving very heavy recruitment and training costs of the order of £60 per employee, complacency would be absurd. With local unemployment as low at 0.6 per cent, and more than a score of flourishing local industries to tempt staff away almost before they are trained, measures to staunch the labour turnover are urgently called for.
The sheer drudgery of navigating a bus round traffic-congested streets laid out originally by the Romans makes the work unattractive to many. Labour relations are
good. with ready joint consultation—as opposed to a formal committee structure— to iron out real or fancied grievances. Given a fair wind for the new productivity-based re-scheduling it is reasonable to hope that Leicester's incredible profitability record, allied to low fares will continue. It would be churlish in the extreme to fail to mention that general manager Ronald Smith and his deputy David Smith contrive year by year to create a trading surplus. Last year this amounted to over £166,000. The net surplus of some 05,000 will be handsomely bolstered when the fine new operating centre at Rutland Street—paid for partly from reserve funds—is bolstered by the flim value of the vacated Humberstone Gate premises.
On the coaching side of the industry it is hardly controversial to say that both unions and managements have connived at wholesale breaches of the 1930s hours legislation. When drivers have worked to rule--in effect complied with the law—services have been seriously disrupted. It has been profitable to driving staffs, to companies and to the public at large to develop working patterns which would have been condemned by earlier legislators and are regarded as intolerable by the present generation. Yet within the industry these working patterns will not be easily—or cheerfully—broken. I suspect the industry has not yet woken up to the realization that the traditional (largely illegal) operating patterns which have yielded reasonable profits has been smashed by the 1968 Transport Act.
Fresh patterns To devise fresh operating patterns acceptable to employers and workers, and without prejudice to the service standards that customers look for, would be difficult if existing margins could readily absorb higher pay for shorter working hours. But many costs besides wages are rising. Even modest fares increases scare off some coach patrons. Growing traffic congestion may drive more and more car-owning families back to coach holidays but this is the great imponderable. How to plan wisely for five or 10 years hence—as the industry must do to survive—when the immediate future is so obscure?
In a most instructive talk with Mr. R. Burgin, general manager of Sheffield United Tours, I was left in no doubt that additional part-time drivers will be required for weekend operations in the busy season. It was by no means clear where they would come from. Seaside excursion services such as that from Sheffield to Scarborough involving a working stint commencing at 7.15 a.m. and ending around midnight will no longer be possible on successive days because of the obligatory 12 hours rest between shifts. Passengers would not take kindly to a shorter period at the sea (the coach normally departs for home at 6 p.m.) and the solution seems to involve much more "team and ladle" operation—alternate long and sholl shifts with a variety of duties in a week.
NBC companies, I gather, are considering what reciprocal services are feasible. Sheffield United Tours, for instance, run a double-manned day excursion to Yarmouth (175 miles each way). It seems possible that a Norwich driver could do the Norwich /Yarmouth and return leg, thus shortening the effective driver's hours of the Sheffield man.
The exception which does not count rest hours at the far end against the 60-hour working week is helpful but it largely vitiated because rest periods can only be altered twice weekly.
The 12-hour rest period between duties when a 14-hour day is worked will be onerous unless a shorter duty can be arranged on alternate days.
Although the Act makes "moonlighting" —working on days off—illegal, it is a risk likely to be accepted by less scrupulous drivers and employers. The industry will have to devise its own copper-bottomed schemes for ensuring that the other work done by part-time drivers—driving for over 4 hours—is not incompatible with the Act.
It seems possible that bus clerical staffs doing weekend driving may have to be given a day off during the week to comply with the Act, and managements may have to consider permanent contracts of service for seasonal workers.
Shorter working hours on the Continent—about one-third of SUT's coaches are across the Channel during the summer holiday season—are not likely to cause difficulties to the company. Many of the coaches are stationed at Salzburg or Basle and passengers fly out from Castle Donington airport. With progressive tours starting from Sheffield double-manning is customary.
With UK tours of seven days or more the driver's day off may present problems. On many tours there is a "static" day when the wheels do not turn. Can that day be the driver's rest day? If so, what happens to his "courier" duties? When staying at the same hotel it would be surprising if no passenger queries involved the driver on his nominal day off.
With so many loose ends in the legislation to be resolved managers must plan for likely eventualities. There is already evidence that enforcement will hurt any companies—or drivers—foolish enough to attempt to get round the law.
Entirely fresh operating patterns must develop and it seems clear that the public must be conditioned to pay for the major improvements in working standards now enjoined by law.
A self-reforming industry would have taken steps years ago to bring itself into line with labour conditions in other industries. No doubt bus and coach managers will be tempted to blame Parliament for compelling the industry to operate in a more reasonable way. It would surely be more seemly if companies, trade unionists and Traffic Commissioners made it clear that fares increases now made necessary by the Transport Act were staved off for years by the readiness of drivers to break the law—and of companies to profit from it. That, I fear, is unlikely to happen.