URTU is shifting its sleeping position
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HE UNITED Road Transport Union has changed its attitude to sleeper cabs, but it wants drawbar vehicles to be restricted to two-man operation.
Its road haulage trade group las overturned its earlier Dpposition to the use of sleeper cabs and while effectively its present line is that it has no policy on the subject, there is little doubt that URTU has come to accept them.
But it has not dropped its stance on overnight accommodation, and has called for Government departments to provide proper facilities.
Both developments have been welcomed by the Road Haulage Association secretary Eric Russell who told CM that the sleeper cab move was "a welcome bit of realism".
He said that RHA supports the view that overnight accommodation needs to be improved, and said that this is something which Government rather than the road haulage industry, needs to tackle.
But the RHA is far less happy about URTU's proposal that the Government be asked to legislate for drivers' mates on rigid lorries pulling drawbar trailers.
Mr Russell commented that this would go back to the "outworn practicesof the early Fifties, and he endorsed the RHA view that maximum dimension vehicles should be used to in
• crease the productivity of road haulage.
But RHA is prepared to accept double manning of vehicles of any size where safety or security demands it.
In line with the Transport and General Workers' Union, URTU has accepted the tachograph as a fait accompli, and is now pressing for terms and conditions "to compensate for the acceptance and inclusion of tachographs-.
This looks likely to be as popular as the double-manning of drawbar lorries. Mr Russell said: "We can only negotiate on tachographs on an individual basis, and increased payments will only be made where productivity arises out of the use of tachographs.