Hauliers face racism label
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by Karen Miles • Many road transport operators operate racist employment policies, says the Transport and General Workers Union, which is monitoring hauliers to assess the proportion of drivers employed from ethnic minorities.
The TGWU's equal opportunities section is to recommend to the leadership of the union's 150,000 CV drivers that it tries to identify "institutionalised racism" among operators. "Driving up and down the motorway you don't see many coloured faces in the best paid driving jobs," says Bob Purkiss, national secretary for equalities at the TGWU.
The move comes in the week that the TGWU reached agreement with Ford that drivers at the company's Truck Fleet branch at Dagenham should be subject to new recruitment procedures and increased monitoring of their ethnic back ground—at present nearly all Truck Fleet drivers are white.
An independent assessor will accompany a Ford assessor for in-cab selection tests; Truck Fleet statistics on the drivers' ethnic backgrounds will become more transparent.