THE BUS INDUSTRY SHOULD PREPARE ITSEL FOR BETTER DAYS
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. . . and press for a special share of training grants
A REVIVAL of growth must be due for the road passenger transport industry, said Mr Eric Tindall, director-general of the Road Transport Industry Training Board, on Tuesday of this week. Presenting a paper, "Training and change", to the Scottish Road Passenger Transport Association annual conference at Gleneagles, he welcomed some "outstanding examples of modern training achievement" in the industry, and urged operators to build upon these for the expanding future which he foresaw. They must abandon a suspicious attitude towards change.
Assuming that his belief in bus industry expansion was correct, said Mr Tindall, then he felt the industry must now:—
(a) Take the widest possible view of its corporate purpose. Every chief executive should ask himself at least twice a year "What kind of activity am I running?"
(b) Recruit and train the best young blood available.
(c) Remember that we were training for the future and not the past. Training was the insurance for the continuation of the service given to the community.
The speaker also felt that the passenger transport industry could make a special case for a weighted share of the training grants which are to be made available under the new Manpower Commission. This was absolutely vital since, on the basis of equal shares, the £30m available to run the Boards and pay key training grants worked out at not much more than £1 per head of the working population.
Accelerating change Mr Tindall opened his paper with an examination of the nature of change — social, economic, political, legislative and educational — and its influence on passenger transport. He also referred to physical change in people: they were now larger, which presumably had an effect on uniforms and vehicle design — "although it clearly has not affected car seat designers".
People now lived longer, particularly women, with passenger implications for the bus and coach industry. There were, he said, more people alive now than had lived in the whole of the world's history — but there were signs that Europe's population might "peak out" in 10 years.
Emphasizing the accelerating rate of technological change, he referred to an authoritative summary of the development of mechanical and electrical engineering published in 1959: the first page of the 40-page book covered the period from 500,000 BC to 300 BC, and the last page covered February to December 1958.
Exemption from levy
Tracing developments in education and in transport training, Mr Tindall explained the main effects which the new British industrial training legislation would have. As set out in a White Paper and the Employment and Training Bill, the new manpower Commission would submit proposals for a new Training Board to be set up. This would have the duty of encouraging adequate training; the permissive would replace the mandatory.
The Board would also have power to provide advice about training and to run courses, and the grant provision would be enlarged.
Levies were in general to be limited to not more than I per cent of emoluments, and firms which were able to show that their training and further education arrangements were adequate (judged against some criteria specified in the proposals) would be able to apply for a certificate exempting them fron paying levy.
There would also be a levy cut-off marli for small firms.
The Manpower Commission would have powers to control a Board's expenditure including the purposes for which grants en loans are made.
Firms dissatisfied in their application foi exemption, or allied matters, would be ablt to appeal to a special body to be set up 1)3 the Minister — though not until the fiar had already asked the Board to reconsidei its original decision.
Another new factor was that thi Manpower Commission, the Employmen Services Agency and the Training Service Agency or their officers would have statutory right to demand certain busines: information from employers, under flu protected disclosure legislation.
Training in the bus industry Between 1967/8 and 1971/2 employmer in the road passenger transport industry fel from 258,000 to 225,000, reflecting nc only the continuing switch to car travel bu also the beginning of a large programme single-manning on buses. Excursions an tours had not shared the decline, and thi sector employed more than 5000 psv drive' and a similar number of supporting staff, i an expanding business.
The major passenger statistics, set out i Figure 1, show how public transport's slim of road passenger mileage fell from 45 pt cent in 1956 to 14 per cent in 1971. Figui 2 shows the halving of journeys annuall: and the much smaller decline in the numb4 of vehicles employed.
About 20,000 of the contraction i employment ,between 1967/8 and 1971 / Iccurred among conductors and the rest ,mong psv drivers. Nonetheless the industry till employed 142,000 platform staff in 972, together with 16,500 managerial and upervisory staff, and 18,000 professional, ommercial and clerical people. There were iso 17,000 craftsmen and 25,000 other iperatives.
Mr Tindall showed a graph (Figure 3) precasting how overall employment might nova in the next 10 years, Another diagram Figure 4) showed how little the industry's
■ ccupational structure had altered during he period 1968 to 1972 despite the ingle-manning programme.
Mew powers examined The speaker (whose paper, he made clear, :presented his own rather than the TITB's views) welcomed the linking of raining with a National Manpower Plan n the Employment and Training Bill's rov isions. One of the weaknesses of the 964 Industrial Training Act had been that . divorced training from other personnel ictivities. In practice the RTITB had Pvercome this but it was a constant :onstraint on developments.
The Bill's replacement of "shall" by 'may", in terms of most of the Boards' esponsibilities, was a confusion of purpose, ind the need for clear objectives was ssential for an organization which operated )y a sophisticated form of Management by )bjectives.
The amount of money was inadequate and as outlined earlier) the 1,30m spread over he whole working population allowed for ally LI of spending per head. The bus ndustry had a case for a larger share.
The greatest cause for concern, however, vas about the ultimate responsibility and uthority for training. Under the ITB system there had inevitably been strong feelings about how far the industry controlled its own training destiny. Under the new proposals, with Boards being co-ordinated by the Training Services Agency and the Manpower Commission, and with many of their present powers subject to scrutiny by these two bodies plus the Department of Employment and the Civil Service Department, there must be increased concern about control.
Training activity Much of this concern centred around the assets and property of the Board already paid for by the industry, but there was also anxiety that human investments should be protected.
As to the pattern of training activity in the passenger industry to date, this was shown in graphical form; the decline in the most recent year (Figure 5) is not so significant as it may appear, since it includes a 12,000 reduction in the training of conductors (partly a result of singlemanning) and reflects a reduction from 56 per cent (1967 /8) to 33 per cent (1971 /2) in labour turnover in the industry.
The 1970/1 peak was itself a result of the intensive driver training stemming from the switch to o-m-o.
Mr Tindall said that altogether more than 1000 psv driving instructors and 150 conductor instructors had been trained at the RTITB's Motecs.
Managerial and supervisory training had, he pointed out, increased steadily from 1660 in 1967/8 to 4400 in 1971/2, but the 18,500 days spent by supervisors and managers in off-the-job training in the latter year was little more than one day's training per head.
About 90 per cent of the total employment in the passenger transport industry was in companies with more than 100 employees, and 97 per cent of the industry's training activity took place in those companies.
Although excursions and tours business had expanded, the typically small coach operating company had carried out very little driver training.
The number of days off-the-job training in the industry over five "training years" is shown in Figure 6.
People, money and technology Examining the complexity of change, and ways of sorting the important from the trivial in a constructive way for the future, Mr Tindall concentrated on three main aspects: the elements (people, finance and facilities); the technology; and philosophy.
People were incredibly flexible resources, limited only by artificial restrictions set up by society: finance always appeared to be a problem, but in practice seldom prevented a particular course being chosen with a little luck; and if technology was going to be applied to the use of the resources than it needed to be flexible.
A good example of this flexible technology was, he said, the Board's suggestion for the technology of management development. The processes in this included the statement of long-term objectives; an analysis of the present state of the business; the creation of action plans; the statement of unit objectives -sub-divided into objectives for each manager; a review of results; and an updating of plans.
Management style The third aspect, the philosophy, could be the organization's creed or its management style, but the essential thing was to be consistent. There were companies which waited for events and then reacted to them, which was enormously demanding on management and could only succeed in small firms. There were other companies which planned everything in such grea detail that some details were bound to turr out wrong which might cause a loss o credibility. There were others who plannec the main outlines but left the details flexible on the reaction principle.
Tomorrow Mr Tindalll said the passenger transpor industry seemed to be dealing we) with change at the moment, though he felt i had not reacted well to changinl circumstances in the past.
Road transport now enjoyed a grea increase in training activity, stemmini mainly from the 1964 Act, and it ha■ considerable training resources. Thesi included two Motecs capable of takinl 10,000 trainees a year; over 120 grout training associations; over 130 eompan: off-the-job training centres; and man: instructors, training vehicles and specia aids.
Management had seen more clearly th value of training, and trade unions ha come to understand that training was mor than a fringe benefit for their members.
It was essential to build on thesi achievements with an eye to new growif Our ability to move people and goods wa likely to be crucial to our economic growt' in the next few decades.