NO CAREER STRUCTURE
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"Focus" in this week's issue (CM20-26 May) raises a very interesting question: where, indeed, are the black and brown faces in the cabs of Britain's lorries?
You suggest there may be a problem with HGV drivers' career structure, but as far as I can recollect no career structure exists. A driver is a driver until he or she retires (or more often gets out). there are no promotion prospects because there is no scope for promotion—unless moving to a job driving a desk in the traffic office is considered promotion.
I suggest it is the total lack of prospects for advancement which deter "ethnic minority" (I hate that word) workers from choosing HGV driving as a career. Colour of skin, religion, culture, background or peer pressure have nothing to do with it. If hauliers are so sensitive about being branded racist (by the CRE---racism personified), why do they not recruit black and Asian workers and train them to become drivers, fitters, office clerks—or even, dare I say it, managers?
Then again, perhaps it is because of experiences of treatment at the hands of the police while driving their cars that so few black and Asian people decide to drive lorries for a living?
John Benton, Moxley, West Midlands.