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WHAT PRICE OUR JOBS?
Page 9
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Imagine if you, as a reputable, law-abiding, tax-revenue-generating, local-driver-employing, environmentally-aware, all-round pillar of the haulage community were, despite all your efficiencies and general skill at running a business, suddenly saddled with rules and regulations that forced all your trucks to drive everywhere at 30mph. Meanwhile your competitors, provided they don't generate that much tax or keep people off the dole, can all travel at 56mph and do virtually twice the work that one of your trucks could.
Clearly you'd start losing money hand-over-fist to your self-employed rivals as your customers went in search of cheaper rates. No matter that you did good things for the environment, looked after your staff, or even, for all your customers cared, adopted starving wide-eyed Romanian peasant children with your hard-won profits. All they want is their goods shifted from A to B at the lowest rate.
"Surely if the WTD was created on the grounds of r safety exduding a large chu of the industry is ridiculous'
Clearly the above scenario is plucked from the air but, in terms of what the Working Time Directive will do it's not so far from the truth. How refreshing then, that in this month's edition of the Road Haulage Association newsletter Roadway chief executive Roger King gives the clearest indication yet that the RHA supports the idea of having the same rules for all UK drivers on the road, whether serfemployed or not. This view does not seem to be shared by FTA chief executive Richard Turner, who says his members want the exemption especially if the rules prove to allow widespread use of the selfemployed in practice. A surprising view from an organisation which won the Prince Michael Award for Road Safety for its work on driver fatigue. Surely if the WTD was created on the grounds of road safety then excluding a large chunk of the industry is ridiculous?
Roger King also talks about the threat from self-employed foreign drivers taking UK work. One way our government could combat this threat would be a substantial reduction in fuel duty. One-third of my turnover goes in various forms of taxation to the Treasury so would it not be better to lose a small amount of fuel duty than to surrender our industry to se-employed foreign drivers and lose everything?