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ARTICLE OF FAITH
Page 105
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00LITICS is the art of the obvious. Time and again recently we have been told, as if it were a new discovery, that productivity St increase. The phrase has become an incantation, a blind article faith. To a large extent there is no harm in this. It is self-evident t if men and machines can be made or persuaded to do more rk there must be a corresponding rise in national prosperity. only error lies in the indiscriminate application of the truism dl fields of endeavour.
ransport provides a good example special case, although naturally not n exception from the broad principle. ; not without significance that until ntly many traders and manufacrs were of the opinion that product' and transport had no connection. 'plaints were continually made by iers that their vehicles were used by omers as mobile warehouses and drivers were expected to wait finitely until it was convenient to or unload their vehicles.
considerable change of attitude has brought about, partly by the turntd campaign conducted by the Road lage Association during National luctivity Year and partly by the iciation's recommendation—backed up he Prices and Incomes Board—that tbers should charge demurrage for ie and unnecessary delays. All the one can see the point of view of and industry. Transport produces ing and it seems a contradiction in s to speak of its productivity. It was this reason that some years ago I ested transportivity as a more apt valent.
least there are grounds for examinwhether the problem is different for port than for most other industries, equivalent of the manufactured uct is the space provided in a vehicle.
made available or produced only the vehicle is sent on a journey, and happens only when titre is traffic to r:arried somewhere along the line. uction and sales are both part of the : process. There can hardly be overuction in the sense that vehicles are out when there is nothing for them ).
PRODUCTIVITY MEASURED IN MILES am the point of view of the driver, uctivity is measured by the number iles run during his spell of duty. The ortion of empty running makes no -ence to him. The person vitally ted is the employer, who counts uctivity in terms of some such unit e ton-mile. As far as he is concerned the return load automatically doubles productivity even though it involves no extra effort from the driver.
The number of ton-miles covered corresponds to the volume of sales in other industries. In spite of this the ton-mile is widely accepted as the appropriate unit for measuring productivity in transport. It is hard to see what other satisfactory method could be devised. The output of a vehicle or a driver can only be assessed by a formula based in some way on the number of tons carried and the distance that each ton is conveyed. Obviously this must lead to unfair comparisons when for no fault of the driver the vehicle travels long distances empty or part loaded.
On ton-mile performance alone hauliers should be above criticism. According to the published results of the road goods transport surveys made by the Ministry of Transport, operators holding A and B licences covered 13,000m. ton-miles in 1958 and 17,300m. ton-miles in 1962, an increase of 33 per cent. Over the same period the number of vehicles carrying this traffic rose from 174,000 to 192,000, or by about 10 per cent. The average increase in productivity per vehicle was about 12 per cent.
RISING COSTS Road haulage costs rose by a good deal more than this over the four years and it should not have been surprising that road haulage rates also went up, although not at the same pace as prices in general. It is a reasonable assumption that productivity as measured by the ton-mile has continued to increase since 1962 up to and including the period which has been surveyed by the Prices and Incomes Board. It is an anomaly that the Board has made no reference to the paint. The Board's two reports leave the impression that productivity in road haulage is static or even declining and that drastic measures must be taken to improve it.
The Board appears to regard road haulage as essentially no different from any other industry. The steps recommended are on the whole those which with a few changes could apply to any manufacturer. Nothing incongruous is seen, for example, in the suggestion that productivity would be increased by reducing the working day from 11 hours to 10 without reduction in the work done and without loss of earnings.
In many case the recommendation could have the opposite effect to that intended. There are, of course, drivers who deliberately spread a job over the maximum working day in. order to earn more money. Very often in effect, however, the job is one for which a whole day is needed. The leisure hour gained by working a little harder would be acceptable to the driver, but neither his productivity nor that of his vehicle would be increased as there would be no work suitable for the vehicle during the extra hour.
Many drivers, perhaps the majority, are engaged on work where it is difficult to increase speed. The collection-and-delivery van in busy city streets may be fully stretched the whole day, bearing in mind the delays in traffic.and at the premises of customers. The reduction in the working day will again be welcomed by the driver, especially if he loses no pay as a result, but it may be a physical impossibility for him to do the same round as previously. Extra vehicles may have to be Put on with a resultant loss rather than gain in productivity.
WILLING CO-OPERATION NEEDED It has already been pointed out that some of the other recommendations in the final report of the Prices and Incomes Board, such as the extension of shiftworking and the adoption of weekend working, depend for their success entirely upon the customers of the hauliers. Organizations representing trade and industry have offered their co-operation. It remains to be seen whether the firms which they represent , and particularly the persons employed within those firms, would be equally willing to make what might be regarded as a sacrifice to ensure that facilities are available for loading or unloading vehicles at, in effect, all hours of the day and night including Saturdays and Sundays. There might well be considerable opposition to taking what in some respects seems a retrograde step.
Janus