Grocers and "Bewildering Regulations" A T a trade rally of East
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London grocers, held at Walthamstow, to call attention to the recent trend of adverse legislation, Mr. W. Herman Kent, M.B.E., secretary of the National Federation of Grocers Associations, said that regulations regarding motor vehicles were being brought out in such bewildering numbers that it was impossible to say off-hand whether a particular regulation was in draft or whether it was in operation.
Attempts had been made to restrict the liberty of ancillary users. A coinrittee of inquiry had recently been held into the wages, hours and conditions of the A, B and C-licence holders' drivers, at which he had himself given evidence on behalf of the Grocers Federation. Amongst other things, he urged that ancillary users should be freed from the obligation to pay a rate of wage formulated by the National Joint Conciliation Board.
It was not because the retail distributive trade was unmindful of its duty to pay a fair wage to its drivers, but because there was an essential difference between the driver of a vehicle that was engaged in the haulage of goods primarily for profit, and the man who, in loamy cases, was only a parttime driver. That freedom gained for such drivers under the 1933 Act had recently been challenged, and the grocery trade intended taking up a strong attitude in defence of its just cause.