DRIVERS UNDER SIEGE
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As we move into this year's pay round, employers are moving into a tougher negotiating gear. The trouble is, drivers could be left in the slow lane.
Good drivers are the lifeblood of the haulage industry. It's their driving skills, their love of the job and their dedication that oil the wheels of the business, Their professionalism and loyalty are rewarded in two ways: individually, in recognition of personal performance; and collectively, for providing a service to society at large.
But it seems that employers are in danger of forgetting this.
Oil company Conoco is asking its 211 drivers to make a seemingly impossible decision (see Industry News page 6). If Conoco's drivers want to keep their jobs rather than see their employer con tract out its distribution to a third party (several of whom have already tendered and are waiting in the wings) they have to agree to losing productivity pay in return for a nominal increase in basic rates.
But the drivers don't see this as an improvement in basic Day and conditions: from where they stanc, it looks like a 20% cut. Where's the incentive for improving each driver's personal performance, not to mention maintaining his goodwill and loyalty? The drivers' union, the TGWU, says this week that drivers need a 6% rise to maintain present living standards. Ironically, the Road Haulage Association is taking the reverse approach to that adopted by Conoco: it is advocating productivity-related pay over percentage increases as a negotiating gambit. The RHA says that hauliers' margins are so tight at present that ''pay increases have to be earned".
Drivers can be forgiven for wondering which way the wind is blowing. Do you sit back and accept the cut-and-dried package offered by an employer, or do you get out there and hustle for a better deal?
In Scotland the picture is even more blurred_ RHA members have threatened to drop collective wage bargaining through the Joint Industrial Council if the unions pick off individual companies for industrial action during this year's pay round before agreement is reached (see Industry News page 5). That's after the TGWU has just rejected a 1.9% wage offer. One thing all employers demand is loyalty. One thing all employers seem to forget is that loyalty has to paid for.