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Sand Castles
NOBODY seems in the least surprised that an organization known as the Sand and Ballast Hauliers and Allied Trades Alliance should have launched on the Road Transport Industry Training Board an attack which was none the less full-blooded for being a little blurred at the edges. But the incident raises a number of questions that are worth examination.
Why should the sand and gravel merchants ever have hoped to get Lim from this particular Board? Why should the Board have encouraged them in the illusion? Why should the hauliers attached to the Alliance suppose they were entitled to regular grants of several times the amount they pay in levy? Is there anything to stop the merchants proceeding with their scheme and seeking financial support from a training board more closely identified with their industry?
Mostly the trouble stems from the faulty structure of the RTITB. It covers far too wide a range. The idea may have seemed attractive at the outset that every activity connected with road transport should be covered by one organization although even then there were significant omissions such as vehicle manufacturers and C-licence holders.
Source of friction Little advantage has been gained and the very existence of the RTITB has been a source of friction among the interests which it has been set up to serve. A separate Board for hauliers would certainly have been a better idea. They would have had sufficient representation to ensure that they alone were to blame for the amount of the levy or the way in which it was distributed. There would have been no room for suspicion that the money was being diverted.
Far from improving its image the RTITB goes from bad to worse. It has too many interests to satisfy. Whatever it does to help one section of its constituents is almost bound to upset the rest. The stage has been reached when many of its actions and decisions appear to please nobody.
No doubt the Board believes it has acted in all ways correctly towards the SBHATA. In the early period when everything was still to be done it must have seemed enterprising and unusually helpful that the Alliance should offer to provide a comprehensive training centre, described in the prospectus as a "transport college" with facilities for the theoretical and practical instruction of transport staff from drivers to directors.
Surely this was just what the Board wanted. The Alliance pressed on. A suitable site was found. The plans included workshops which, again according to the prospectus, were to be run on a semi-cornmercial basis while being sufficiently advanced in design and equipment to form a useful research centre for commercial vehicle manufacture.
All, that now had to be found was £1m. This was the cue for the entry of the RTTTB in the role of the Good Fairy. The cue was missed. When it came to the point the Board had other fish to fry. Other training centres were being considered and, said the Board, "should one of these more general schemes mature the need of your members could be met to a very large extent".
Later came news that the Board was anxious to sponsor group training schemes. They are intended to help the large number of relatively small firms who are not able to employ their own training officers or instructors. By pooling their resources, 'said the Board, a number of small firms can achieve the training advantages of much larger organizations and employees can be properly trained under conditions which are likely to qualify for grant.
Apparently the Board asked the Alliance to consider organizing this kind of scheme. It must have seemed a reasonable request. The Alliance claims a membership of about 200 hauliers operating between 4,000 and 6,000 vehicles. They are all doing much the same kind of work. The circumstances must have been what the Board had in mind.
With the enthusiasm that seems inseparable from all their activities the Alliance threw themselves into the preparation of yet another scheme. This time surely there could be no mishap. Then came the Board's announcement of the new differential scale of levies with the additional warning that grants in future would not normally exceed 150 per cent of what an operator had paid.
'Academical madness' The Alliance almost seemed to take this personally. It claimed that the announcement sounded the death knell of the scheme to which the Alliance had devoted so much time and energy.
An exuberant condemnation followed of the RTITB and all its works. The Alliance demanded "a practical and functional training board that is not overloaded with academical madness". There should be co-ordination with the Ministries principally concerned instead of the Board "sitting it out alone in the ivory towers of Capital House costing the industry approximately £600,000 per annum".
Much that is mysterious remains. There must be other group training schemes that are being developed in addition to the one abandoned by the Alliance. No other complaints have so far been received that the ceiling on grants has made the schemes impossible to operate. In the announcement of the new rates of levy the Board stated that the ceiling would not apply to certain activities including "group training schemes". One would like to know whether and for what reason this saving clause does not apply to the scheme of the Alliance.
The significant point about the levy for 1969-70 is that it bears most hardly upon the larger operator with a payroll in excess of £15,000 a year. He has to pay at the full rate of 2.2 per cent. Firms in the middle bracket pay 1.5 per cent and the very small companies with a payroll of not more than £5,000 pay only 0.75 per cent.
Perennial complaint It was the belief of the Board that the small operator found difficulty in deriving benefit from training. Not everybody agreed with this. A perennial complaint by the larger operators is that after they have taken the trouble to train a man he takes another job often with a smaller firm who thus get all the advantages of the training without the expense. Group training schemes in themselves will lessen whatever educational gap exists between the large and small operator.
On these grounds the latter should be more than content that he is paying at only one-third of the rate levied on his larger competitors. It may have been a disagreeable surprise to the Board to find that this was not the attitude of the considerable number of small hauliers in the Alliance.
What the Alliance is saying is also in contradiction to the recent complaint by the Road Haulage Association that hauliers are taxed unfairly in comparison with firms engaged principally on vehicle maintenance and repair. The argument is that far less has. to be spent on training a driver than a fitter or mechanic. Such figures as are available from the Affiance point to the conclusion that to prepare a driver for work on a tipping vehicle costs a good deal more than has been supposed. Perhaps if the RHA had its way and a differential was introduced the members would find themselves paying more rather than less.
A separate board for hauliers would have bypassed this problem completely. It would also have avoided the impression, stated in strong language by the Alliance but held throughout the industry, that the RTITB is peddling dreams and is out of touch with reality.
The individual officers of the Board do not give this impression. The trouble must lie elsewhere in the organization. It does not correspond with an industry that feels itself to be a unity. Consequently the various activities of the Board jar against each other and fail to command support.
The introduction of quality licensing and the disappearance of the C licence will only add to the confusion. There is in any case the danger that a large part of the road haulage industry will disintegrate into clusters of operators tied to one customer or to a particular trade. The amorphous structure of the Board will aid this process rather than prevent it.