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24th April 1970, Page 60
24th April 1970
Page 60
Page 60, 24th April 1970 — topic
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

The wider shores of training by Janus

IF hauliers revealed on the psychiatrist's couch an inferiority complex or a persecution mania or a combination of both they would have some excuse. Over the years there has seldom been lacking some consciously superior body surveying their activities from an apparently safe eminence and finding them wanting in many grave particulars.

For a time shortly after the war the British Transport Commission played the Olympian part of the benevolent despot looking benevolently down on the lower form of life that it was called upon to supersede. More recently hauliers have found almost equally insufferable the moral and intellectual assumptions of the Prices and Incomes Board.

It may seem no more than justice that the Commission has long since disappeared and that the Board is on its way out. To fill its place in the minds of hauliers, however, there comes the Road Transport Industry Training Board. They may begin to wonder whether the fault does not lie with them; and whether they will not always find some excuse for attacking any organization associated with them.

' In fact there are few training boards that have given much satisfaction to the industries they cover. In a survey two years ago the Confederation of British Industry drew attention to the wide range of criticisms that had already been made and promised to keep the work of the boards under review. Subsequently there have been numerous individual complaints mostly along the same lines as those that have been levelled at the RTITB. Hauliers are not alone in their dissatisfaction.

THERE is a general feeling that the boards are becoming too bureaucratic. The money and resources available to them are swallowed up in administration. They fix their levies and grants too rigidly so that firms are often hindered rather than helped to develop the system of training that would be most useful to them. No help is given at all where in the judgment of the boards a system seems inadequate or otherwise unsatisfactory.

Almost all the detailed criticisms of the RTITB can be matched in the experience of other industries. But the relationship between an industry and its board is not universally bad. Nearly 30 boards have now been set up. Some have either escaped censure or have been established long enough to make themselves more acceptable.

One of the first to be set up, the Engineering Industry Training Board, has recently published evidence submitted to the Bolton Committee of Enquiry on Small Firms. It reveals that the Board has under consideration a new grant scheme for small firms. There will be a less complicated general grant scheme, with simplified form filling; greater emphasis on specific grants; and increased incentives to participate in group training schemes.

The engineering training board escapes some of the problems of the RTITB. The industry it covers is much more

homogeneous than the wide collection of interests for which the RTITB is forced to cater and a levy which merely varies with the size of the firm has aroused no controversy.

THE full levy of 2.5 per cent is applied only on annual payrolls of £17,500 and above. In all cases the first 0,500 is exempted and between 0,500 and E17,500 the levy is only 1 per cent. In other words on a payroll of exactly 00,000 the effective levy is 1.82 per cent and although it increases with the size of the payroll it never reaches the full figure of 2.5 per cent.

One practice in the engineering industry which would help to meet some of the criticisms in road transport is the linking of the payment of the levy and of the grant. At the outset the firm is advised of the amount of levy due. When the time comes for payment any grants are deducted so that only a net transaction has to be made. If the grants exceed the levy the firm will receive the balance. It does not therefore have to cope with the difficulties that can arise when a substantial sum is paid to the Board and kept for several months before part or all of it is returned in the form of grants.

For small hauliers in particular the procedure in the engineering industry would be a boon. The board's evidence spells out the particular problems of the small man. It is pointed out that he has a different manpower structure from that of the larger firm; his training needs are more sporadic; and he is more likely to use a group training scheme, a technical college or other external agent.

The success of the grant scheme for small engineering firms is shown by the fact that in the aggregate firms employing fewer than 25 people were awarded more in grant than they paid out in levy. This is due, says the board, to the provision whereby specific grants for first year training of craftsmen (at present £504 a year) are paid in full without regard to the amount of levy paid.

NOT all the satisfactory measures taken by the engineering board would be appropriate in road transport. If there has to be a clearing house for ideas it is to be found in the Central Training Council. In its survey two years ago, the CBI already had some doubts about this body. Potentially most powerful it had "not quite got to the heart of the training situation or developed any new -philosophy on training during the four years of its existence".

Stopping short of proposing authoritative powers for the CTC the survey suggested that it should have a more positive role entailing fuller, bolder and more effective use of its existing powers, "particularly with a view to evolving a grand strategy on training comprising principles and priorities as guidance for the training boards".

The CTC should also, said the survey, be the proper forum for the ventilation of complaints about the way in which the training system is operating. It should be more closely concerned with making its own assessment and evaluation of what is being achieved under the Industrial Training Act.

It will not be long before the CBI produces a more up-to-date review of the situation in the course of which the role of the CTC may again be assessed. The opinion of the CBI is not likely to have changed. In the meantime the CTC itself has published last week the report of a committee set up to review its functions and organizations and to recommend any necessary changes.

HE basic finding is that the CTC should continue as an advisory body only. It is acknowledged that more initiative and influence are needed from the centre. The primary aim, says the report, is to strengthen the capacity of the training division of the Department of Employment and Productivity so that it can carry out more detailed surveys and investigations into the work of individual training boards. It is further recommended that a committee of the CTC should assume general responsibility for planning a survey programme and that there should be provision for supervision and control of each individual project.

Hauliers might approve of this in principle. It was in September 1966 when the RTITB was first formed in a general atmosphere of goodwill that Sir John Hunter, at that time chairman of the CTC, addressed the Commercial Motor fleet management conference. He drew particular attention to the fact that "a training board is a servant of its industry", and would therefore be successful, he continued, only to the extent that it had the confidence of employers in its industry.

One may wonder whether the present CTC chairman, Mr Frank Cousins, is also of this opinion and what the reaction would be if he voiced it at another road transport conference.


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