Warding off the worst in the West Midlands
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It's murder as a job now and I would never go back to it — as an ex-haulier RHA West Mids Area Secretary Bob Ward should know. Business may be bad in this traditionally affluent region, but the Association itself is in good heart, as John Durant reports
IMMERCIAL VEHICLE traffic ing Sedgley Road West, in the dland town of Tipton, is noti3bly lighter than it used to be, t because lorries are taking an ernative new route but entiy owing to our industrial ression: it's that bad in this rem.
[here are too many down at el streets sheltering pad;Iced premises around Birngham; perhaps there always It's nevertheless strange recall that the area was instrially affluent. Roadway fuse, the West Midland Road 'Wage Association's smart aa office, which is in this road, on the contrary, an oasis of I-scale activity.
-lave the West Mids expericed the trough in this recesm? Is haulage coping? Are inistrial relations in these cumstances reflecting a new rmony and realism? After )eting Area secretary Bob 3rd, I gained the impressions: ) Yes, hopefully; (2) No, rdly; (3) By no means.
would qualify this. (1) Time ll tell; (2) It's too late now for 3ny firms; and, reminiscing (3) ing back Alan Law! (Road ulage went three smooth ars without a strike when he, a man so many loved to hate, 3s Transport and General Drkers Union supremo in the aa).
While thirteen areas had ttled their wage claims, the ast Mids Joint Industrial Countalks, between nine RHA reasentatives and nine from the IWU, broke down. One local 'ening paper reported erwards that representatives im both sides said the result is eturn to the jungle.
The union side had decided to proach firms individually for y rises, having rejected an 'er of a basic £81 per week, aking them the joint highest Id drivers in England and ales (while, I gather, the Scots 3 regarded as slightly mad). The TGWU claim was £83 sic for 40 hours. The RHA unter for this was that the est Mids cannot afford that.
Very simply, Bob Ward believes one problem has been the previous relative affluence in the West Mids, something that is now in the category of the good old days. Because hauliers in this area — it includes Staffordshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire — are in deep trouble.
Manufacturers are hit and the RHA cannot generate traffic. The area has suffered from the drivers strike of '79, the engineers' go slow later in that year, the steel dispute last year — and now the recession, which has come on apace.
The day I visited West Midlands Roadway House, news came in of three member firms ending business — two with bosses on the RHA Area Committee, and Bob was upset at this. "It's coming right home," he said. "Medium-size firms in particular in this area are in difficulty."
It was not Bob, however, who put into my head the sentiment, "Bring back Alan Law." He was a clever negotiator. Perhaps he would regard the union's new stance of negotiating with individual firms as a clever ploy, if the men insist on taking a particularly tough line while so many jobs are disappearing.
Not that Bob is anti-Alan Law; not for the first time I had met a negotiator from the employers' side who stood up for him. "Some people called him a dictator, but in fact he is a clever man and very skilful negotiator who always kept his side of deals.
"He was devious, but never broke his word. Before I came here there had been 23 strikes in 18 weeks. The RHA had not spoken to him for three years. A ridiculous situation. On the first day I was here Alan Law tested me — he knew it and I knew it — and I resolved the situation. From that day there was no strike in the West Mids and the five counties for three years — until the drivers' national strike."
The West Mids area was the first to form an Assenting Hauliers' Group and one of the last to have a JIC. ACAS quietly encouraged both sides to get together. "We worked hard", said Bob.
"That is why I'm sad that the JIC has failed its first real test, and the reason behind this is not the fault of the RHA or the TGWU but the state of the economy.
"We have problems in the West Mids that others don't have: we have traditionally been a profitable, affluent area.
"The West Mids RHA has been the most successful of the Association's Areas and that reflects the members' position. But industy has got to a very low level: Birmingham and the Black Country has lost 45 to 50 per cent of its traffic.
"The Engineering Employers' Federation reports 40 to 45 per cent loss of engineering. Of course, they cut off extra business from the hauliers and do what they can with their own vehicles.
"And in the rural part of this Area about 25 per cent of traffic has been lost. All this has happened so quickly that we have riot been able to adjust. It's easy to say 'put vehicles against the Nall' but business overheads remain. Even hire purchase companies won't snatch vehicles back and this is where the trouble lies."
Before the birth of the JIC, ACAS had suggested that URTU should be included, but URTU representatives walked out of the preliminary talks. So it's an RHA and TGWU confrontation now, the union being represented by five full-time officials and four elected shop stewards. The chief union official these days is Jim Hunt. "He's an honest man and I have a lot of time for him," says Bob.
So there's no hostility here behind the negotiations breakdown. Bob himself is on the JIC, and the RHA's Norman Ingram is this year's chairman.
Norman Ingram, who was Association national chairman 20 years ago, also leads the RHA's team. His family business is run by his son and he is retiring from the RHA at the end of the year. "He has a wealth of experience and is a statesman. We'll miss him," says Bob.
This team, is of course, elected by the West Mids RHA, which has 1,600 members — it had around 1,700-1,800 in better times. There must be a large number of hauliers who don't belong to either the RHA or the ETA, which is similarly strong in the area, and probably many of them, are owner-drivers. But around 400 do belong to WMRHA. But around 14,000 operators' licences have been issued in the local traffic area.
Negotiations are not made any easier by the large amount of haulage in rural districts — all the West Midland Area is not industrial by any means. Combined with this is the problem of the West Midlands supplement. "It's a millstone around our necks and many hauliers don't pay it," said Bob.
The union side, he said, after being told the West Midlands cannot afford £83 basic for 40 hours, in practice around £100 with overtime, then talked in terms of percentages. But in cash terms, argued the RHA team, they were paying the equivalent of the rest of the country..
The Association offered a basic of £81, coupling with that an agreement to abolish the . West Midlands £1.50 supplement. An offer of £50 per man above the £81 basic was offered with a requirement that an 11month agreement — February to December — was signed.
The union side never even adjourned for further consideration, and a failure to agree was recorded.
It seemed that the RHA's offer of a 50p increase on subsistence was acceptable, and also 2p added to the present 48p for nightwork; the union had asked for a pro rata increase on nightwork. But £83, said the As sociation, was out of the ques tion.
"The JIC is still there, but the wage part is off the coat-rack. It can still deal with disciplinary procedures, etc. If the JIC fails we have nothing, not even a forty-hour week."
Business, then, is bad in the West Midlands — many hundreds of lorries must be off the road. Are there any signs for optimism? "My personal view is that we have no more than reached the bottom of the recession," said Bob, "but people are restocking steel."
A puzzling point to Bob is that several hundred applications were made in the area for 0licences during 1980. The worry is that they may be people starting in a small way, and it could be that they don't understand the rate structures and will catch a • cold, but meanwhile spread the germs around and hit hauliers.
In view of these applicants he is surprised that more people aren't studying for their CPC.
And, besides, haulage is more difficult — more complicated — than it used to be a few years ago. "It's murder as a job now and I would never go back to it," said Bob, who has been Area secretary for six years, executive officer before that for seven, and has run a haulage business in Birmingham. So he knows the business from first-hand experience.
He has also available at close call a large reservoir of RHA experience to add to his own: his wife Joyce, now his administrative officer, has worked for the RHA for 16 years. "She looks after the shop," he said, "the books and the internal work. I'm very lucky.
"I get out and meet members, explore their problems, look after the image of the RHA and I hope influence people on behalf of the membership. Every Area secretary runs his area his own way and as we are fairly affluent we have more staff than some others.
"I admire the membership: they are intriguing; self-reliant; foolish, sometimes; generous; and incredibly hard working. They are efficient at moving traffic but can slip up on costings, and this is where we should come in. And I think we have over the last ten years.
"I have the sort of membership that allows me to shoot back. At a sub-area meeting the other night there was some needle, but we talked late and had drinks and sandwiches.
"And I have a strong committee and always accept what they say. They never lean on me. Life with a weak chairman or a weak committee, would make life very difficult.
"I get out and see individual members every week, and myself and the executive officer each attends half of all the meetings, including those of ten and sub-areas and six or seven functional groups."
His predecessor had been a good housekeeper, and during the past five years the Area's assets had doubled. "Not all my own work, but I had something to do with it."
So, it seems, the Association in itself is in good heart, al though there must be many po tential recruits to be gathered, but it's only natural that 'mem bers losing their business, or in danger of losing it, get downhearted. More than one has broken down and cried on the phone.
I'm told that the recession is that bad.
But where have the main improvements been made and where do they remain to be made?
Bob believes that when he first came there were two main sec tors where expertise was lacking: (1) labour relations; (2) pub lic relations. White the first been resolved, he thinks, second remains a cons1 battle. He wishes the m bership would become n involved; but he realises ' have little time.
"We have able people in I don but I feel sometimes don't know what it's like at sharp end in the Areas wl you can spend five hours or phone at a stretch trying to out members' troubles" (me ones too because the hau industry can be tough on riages).
"Head office must to a de, experience what it's like in Areas; someone at head o should come to the Area equally we should experk life up there."
However, if the Area dot see as much of the head o staff as members would Transport Secretary Nonr Fowler, has been along — social, which was a sell-out.
So members were able to points straight to the top for that those who would affected by the Armitage rec mendation on higher gvw keen but few; more commc the apprehension at the thot that tax on a 32-tonner m reach £800 — and as haulage fat has long since trimmed off it's money would have to be passed o the customer, and this woull inflationary).
At the other end of the s there is a dialogue with the called environmentalists — ing an hour on local radio, example, Bob and Trans 2000 struck sparks off E other, he said.
Thankfully in this Area no debate about transport is ge ated by the anti-road trans pressure groups; the Midl Road Development Group calling an Historic Towns Fa on April 2 in Stratford U Avon, with the Bishop of mingham as chairman.
Bob Ward gets a ten-mir spot on "Industry and Haulier". One man in his 1 plays many parts.