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Waiting time will be exempt from VITO says government
Page 8
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• by Guy Sheppard Transport Minister John Speller says the 48-hour working week will not be as damaging as originally feared by hauliers because it excludes time spent waiting to load or unload vehicles.
He says periods of availability are excluded from the working time directive (WTD) as well as rest and break periods.
Although the definition of working time includes activities such as vehicle loading, cleaning and maintenance, it excludes accompanying a vehicle on a ferry or waiting for a vehicle to be loaded or unloaded, according to Speller.
-Depending on their individual circumstances, a driver could average 50-60 hours per week on duty and still keep within the 48-hour average working week," he says in a letter to MP George Stevenson.
He adds: "I believe this outcome is much better than most in the haulage industry had originally feared." His interpretation has angered the Transport 86 General Workers Union which says it means drivers will be no better off than now.
Jimmy Hill, chair of the union's national road transport group, says: "How can it be a rest period when a driver is stuck at a distribution centre for four hours waiting to unload?"
He says Speller's interpretation is wrong because although employers have long pressed for waiting time to be excluded, this has yet to be ratified by Brussels.
This is a view shared by the Freight Transport Association. Regional policy manager Joan Williams says the issue is not as clear cut as Speller makes out. She says: "If the driver has to stay in his vehicle while in a queue then that probably counts as working time, but if it's counted as a break under the drivers' hours rules then it shouldn't be counted as working time.
"But we are still waiting for an interpretation from Brussels."
However, Barry Proctor of Barry Proctor Services, the Stoke-on-Trent-based building materials haulier, says employers will be relieved at Speller's interpretation of the directive.
1 think it will make life a lot easier than originally thought." Proctor, who organised a meeting on the WTD for 50 local hauliers earlier this month, says there is still widespread uncertainty about its implications even though it is due to come into force in two years' time.
But another Stoke haulier, John Whitfield, who originally prompted Stoke South MP Stevenson to raise the WTD issue with Speller, says the letter also has some bad news for hauliers because it confirms the exclusion of self-employed drivers from the directive until 2009.
"It persecutes you for actually employing drivers," he says. 'We're going to be uncompetitive and it's not going to be easy to stay in business in two years' time."
• Ron Webb, the national secretary for transport at the Transport & General Workers Union, has called on the industry to use the WTD to boost the Industry's image and alter the public perception of a sector offering poor pay, with a poor safety record and long hours.