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New look for training
HAULIERS will find much to confirm their suspicions or to raise their hopes in the Department of Employment's booklet Training for the Future. They will also learn, if they did not know it already, that
their own chequered relationship with the Road Transport Industry Training Board is not unique. Other industries have had much the same experience.
To find one of the differences first, hauliers may turn to the annex which gives detailed financial information about the training boards. It shows the RTITB staff at the end of 1971 as 806. This is nearly one-sixth of the total of 4744 for all the 28 boards put together and is second only to the 915 employed by the engineering board, which covers 3,200,000 "leviable" employees as compared with 837,000 in road transport.
The estimated yield of L20,870;000 from the current road transport levy is also surpassed only by the engineering levy yield of £91,300,000. No surprise need be felt that hauliers agree with the opinion in the document that the levy-grant system needs to be phased out at a reasonably early date. Legislation relieving boards of their obligation will take effect after 1972 /3.
Boards will have the option to propose a continuation of the system if they are satisfied that it is essential. "A clear consensus in favour of continuance within the industry would be necessary," says the booklet. "Otherwise the Secretary of State for Employment would not be justified in continuing to give the levy scheme statutory force." In considering a proposal, he "would have regard to the position of small firms".
The brief debate on the document in the House of Commons produced the predictable objections from the Opposition to the abandonment of the levy. The opinion of the Government is clear in the document itself. It refers to the "costly, time-consuming and irritant machinery" which each board has had to maintain for raising the levy from individual firms, many of which have been notoriously reluctant to pay.
In spite of the friction on this point, few operators could plausibly deny the claim in the booklet that the boards have done excellent work in improving the quality of training. They have identified the particular requirements of the industry, they have provided advisory services, they have developed sound training requirements and have helped to establish group training schemes. The booklet insists that this work must be maintained and expanded.
A radically different training structure will be set up. At the apex will be the new National Training Agency. It will run the greatly expanded vocational training scheme under which it is hoped that ultimately 100,000 people a year will receive training or re-training. The agency will also have very close control over the work of the boards.
The extent of this control may be greater than appears at first sight. The significant change may be that under which the staff of the boards become employees of the agency. A corollary is that the agency will have control of the purse strings. The estimated Government grant is something between £25m and £40m a year. It will cover the total cost of the work of the
agency and the boards to stimulate training of adequate quantity and quality by employers.
Training advisory service The agency will meet the cost of approved programmes of work by the boards. It will co-ordinate their work on matters of "general concern". In consultation with boards, it will run selective schemes for financial incentives to key training activities. It will develop a
national training advisory service which it will operate itself in industries not covered by boards. It will also concern itself directly with occupations which cut across industrial boundaries.
Special attention will be paid to management training, which is the only such occupation directly mentioned in the booklet. It is generally accepted that the principles of management are broadly the same throughout industry and that management training can best be organised centrally. There are other skills, notably that of lorry drivers and fitters, which may seem specifically the concern of road transport but are in fact required over a wide range of industry.
Although the booklet does not go into such details, one must assume that the training of these experts will remain in the hands of the RTITB. After training, many of them will find jobs outside the road haulage industry.
Under the new arrangement, hauliers may hope for reimbursement of the cost of training which they carry out, or help to carry out, for the general good. They must approve of the booklet, for it promises to adopt many of their own suggestions, although not always exactly on the same lines. They were prepared to continue paying a much smaller levy to keep the RTITB in being. If the money is now to come from a central source, the effect will be the same. In general, hauliers appreciate what the RTITB had done, and would not wish to lose it. by Janus