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Robbing Peter to pay Paul
Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?
In the prospectus for its national conference the Freight Transport Association states that all Training Boards are being asked to approve the occasion for grant purposes. No indication is given of the response to this multiple appeal. It is left to individual delegates to follow up the initial approach.
The procedure is perfectly proper. The organizations represented at the conference will in almost every case operate vehicles of their own under C licence and will not therefore be contributors to the Road Transport Industry Training Board. They will look for reimbursement of training costs to the Board covering the industry which is their main interest.
What steps the Boards take to examine the claims will no doubt vary unless there is a kind of clearing house which examines what might be called extra-mural requests and makes a decision which all the Boards follow. In this case it would have been a kindness to let the FTA know that one letter would do instead of a score or more.
Expenses back The likelihood is that each Board will have to make up its own mind. Some of the delegates may get their expenses back in full; others may receive part payment; yet others given nothing. Whatever the result of this rather specialized public opinion poll the exercise throws a strange light on the whole concept of Training Boards.
The company sending a representative is no doubt well satisfied to pay his costs. When there seems a possibility of getting the money returned any company which is unsuccessful in its claim will have the impression that somehow or other—by a process which is not completely clear—it has paid twice for the same thing.
On the other hand the successful company, grateful as it may be for largesse, may wonder why it should be necessary to meet a levy demand perhaps several months ago merely to have the money to meet an expense it would willingly have incurred in any case. Over the whole range of Training Boards there must be a substantial sum of money lying idle which would otherwise have been used profitably for investment by the contributing firm.
Training Boards set up in the last year or so have appreciated this drawback and set out to minimize it. The Board for the food, drink and tobacco industries has said that it did not feel justified in raising a levy and investing it over s.-veral months before deciding what to pay back in grants.
• The solution found here is to synchronize levy and grant. It is claimed that this will save administrative costs and what is described as the problem of double cash flow. The grant claims process is being simplified as much as possible to place the minimum administrative load on firms.
The Board for paper and paper products, set up in May 1968, will be calling for levy in future after the end of a training year. Funds will remain in the industry rather than with the Board. "In this way," it says, "grants can be offset against the levy payable, or if grants approved are more than the levy the balance paid out by the Board."
Very different is the procedure of the RTITB. A considerable number of complaints must have been received on the subject to prompt the explanatory note in the current issue of the Board's paper. No threat is intended, says the note, in the "reminder" included in the recent levy assessment form that grant claim forms will only be distributed when the ,levy has been paid.
According to the note the Board has made no alteration to its previous practice. No change has been made in the levy-grant sequence nor is there any intention of changing the pattern in the future. What appears to have escaped the Board's notice is that it is exactly on these grounds that many of the original complaints were made.
To a great extent operators are being unfair to the Board. It is a victim of its own past. They cannot forget that in its first year it imposed what they considered a grossly excessive levy and apparently they found it necessary to make over-generous grants to dispose of the accumulated funds. More recently some operators who have organized schemes in expectation of a similar imagined bounty have had their claims turned down.
The Board may not be sufficiently conscious of other problems not of its own making. It has had and probably will always have great difficulty in establishing itself --or rather in being recognized—as an integral and welcome part of the road transport industry.
Employers problems
Three years ago in September 1966 at the Fleet Management Conference organized by Commercial Motor Sir John Hunter, chairman of the Central Training Council, set out his ideas on the role of a Training Board. It was a servant of its industry. Its members came from that industry. The levy which it raised was not a Government tax. The Board should therefore be fully in touch with the problems of employers in its industry and would be successful only to the extent that it had the confidence of those employers. Hauliers at any rate cannot entirely accept the description. Out of 27 members of the RTITB they have only two representatives. In contrast the trade unions specifically concerned with road haulage have six members. Decisions may not always be taken by counting heads but clearly in a dispute the industry has little chance of making its view prevail although it contributes about one-quarter of the total levy.
Differential levy
A perennial cause of friction is the con, sistent refusal of the Board to seek a differential levy. Hauliers believe that the cost of training their employees is on average far less than that of training persons engaged, for example, in motor vehicle repair; and that this will continue to be the case even when heavy goods vehicle drivers have to hold a special licence.
From the point of view of hauliers, therefore, the levy is not in the words of Sir John Hunter "wholly expended in developing training in the industry". A substantial proportion is diverted to what they regard as outside channels. The Board is suffering from the too great diversity of the interests it is supposed to bring together.
No simple solution is to be found in spawning a plurality of Boards. The training needs of the various industries covered by the RTITB are similar if not identical. It would be wasteful to launch parallel training schemes covering much the same ground.
A suggestion sometimes made is that the Board should set up semi-autonomous divisions. This would be in step with the way in which some of the training is developing. Where a group is formed the members almost invariably come from within the same section of the industry and identify their group as part of that section. They would prefer to know that the section was financially self-contained.
Under some such arrangement there should be no difficulty in seeking a differential levy. Whether hauliers were actually paying more than their fair share would soon become apparent. As it is the amounts charged by the Board-2.2 per cent of the payroll for the current year for all but the smallest companies—seems high to the operator who has little chance of obtaining a grant of any size.
Here again the comparison with some other Boards is not favourable. The first levy of the Board for paper and paper products is to be 0.25 per cent and there will be relief for small firms. For the electricity supply industry the levy is only 0.035 per cent.
More than most industries road transport has needed some body such as the RTITB to stimulate training.. The imposition of a statutory Board may not have been the ideal remedy but a great deal has already been achieved. The operators who have pleaded for training facilities in the past are coming into their own. What they now desire most is that their own industry—or section of the transport industry—should control future development. Although the RTITB has tried to meet their wishes they still feel that this is not happening.