Union Roundabout
Page 41
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ABILITY to hold two contrary opinions at the same time is spreading rapidly. When the subject is transport one may be pardoned for not remaining perfectly consistent. It is all too easy to maintain at the beginning of the month that passenger fares are too high, and at the end of the month to be just as vigorously in favour of increasing fares to meet the rise in costs. There is a great temptation to attack integration as the wrong solution to the transport problem, and a few days later to execrate the British Transport Commission for not adopting the right sort of integration. The limit is passed when a course of action is condemned for two reasons one of which is almost the exact opposite of the other.
Some of the trade unions that have protested with the expected unanimity against the plan for denationalization have been particularly guilty of this kind of double-think. On more than one occasion recently meetings of drivers employed by the Road Haulage Executive have complained because some of their workmates have been declared redundant, and have at once passed a resolution alleging that workers are far better off under nationalization.
Mr. J. B. Figgins, general secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen, goes one better. According to a report, he 'began a recent speech by declaring that the Government would not provide an efficient or economical transport system by restoring the old pattern where hauliers owned on an average 21 vehicles each. By the time he had finished,' he was denouncing denationalization because it would provide hauliers with a complete monopoly.
Most of the resolutions already carried at meetings organized by various unions show an unwillingness to examine the Government's plan on its merits. It would " betray the interests of the public to political expediency" and make transport "the plaything of profit-seeking financiers." Apart from political invective of this kind, the protests lack weight.
Proof of Satisfaction The case for leaving things as they are would indeed be strong if there were really proof that the public is satisfied and would suffer as a result of denationalization. But the evidence mainly points the other way. In the words of the White Paper, the Road Haulage Executive " cannot give trade and industry the speedy, individual and specialized services afforded by free. hauliers." To explain why this opinion has been endorsed by the trading and industrial organizations, it is necessary for the Government's opponents to claim that political prejudice colours every statement by a transport user.
Whatever the political opinions of traders in private, they are neutral iti their business relations. If they had found the R.H.E. an improvement, they would have said so and we should never have heard of denationalization. That they have not hesitated to pick holes in the Government's White Paper is an indirect proof of their sincerity in welcoming the promise of a return to free enterprise in road transport. .
Suggestions that the workers would lose as a result of the change are not well founded. Whether the workers have gained anything from nationalization is open to question. Minimum wages fixed by law or by agreement are virtually the same on both sides of the fence. A driver should have it in his power to earn more under free enterprise.
There may be a greater sense of security within the R.H..E., although this is not borne out by the protests at the dismissal of redundant staff. The worker with individual difficulties and preferences must find that a large nationalized organization will not take him into account.
It is a pity that the opinions of the drivers can hardly be canvassed without politics coming into the discussion. Politics reduces every problem to a false black-and-white simplicity. Who is not for the R.H.E. must be against it. I suspect that there is a surprisingly large number of drivers who have no strong views one way or the other. Like other people, they develop a pride in their own outfit whoever happens to be running it. They were proud of it when it was under free enterprise. They are proud of it now it is the R.H.E. Their pride will no doubt survive the second change.
Besieged by Refugees
At the two extremes there are the vocal few to whom nationalization is a religion and the men who make the less noisy, but equally effective, gesture of applying for jobs to hauliers under free enterprise or to C-licence holders. It may be that the offices of the R.H.E. are similarly besieged by refugees from free enterprise, although I cannot remember any report to this effect. Road transport workers outside the R.H.E. outnumber those inside by perhaps 15 to one, and are even less likely to have strong political views. No allegation has ever been made that they are seething with discontent and agog to nationalize the businesses of the hauliers and C-licence holders who employ them.
The existing flesh-and-blood employer is seldom the cause of complaint. Why should he be when the opportunity is there to get a job with somebody else? Whatever hatred the worker is capable of feeling is fomented against a dummy dressed up to represent the haulier of 25 to 30 years ago,a revolting cross between Al Capone and Simon Legree. Whether such a creature ever existed it is impossible to say. If it be wholly imaginary, so much the better, for a myth cannot speak up for itself.
Nevertheless, the unions are in a dilemma. If they paint too idyllic a picture of the present conditions under nationalization, they weaken any subsequent claim for an improvement in those conditions. It is more prudent to adopt an ambiguous attitude not easily &fined and expressed sometimes in curious language, such as that of the railway traffic controller who said that if the Tories struck at his bread and butter they would find him on the opposite side of the fence.
One can appreciate the difficulty. Free-enterprise hauliers, declare the unions, cannot be more efficient than the R.H.E., so they must be restricted. At once they try to find ways -of evading the restriction, So they cannot be trusted. The next step, of, course, will be to claim how far and away superior the R.H.E. would be had it not to keep so close a watch on the illicit activities • of hau.:iers.