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Hefty pay rise highlights driver shortages
Page 5
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• A .2100-a-week pay rise awarded to seven truckers highlights the huge hike in wages now needed to attract new recruits into road haulage, says a union leader.
The deal, awarded by Chillington Manufacturing of Walsall, West Midlands, increases weekly wages by nearly a third to £412.50.
John Walsh, industrial organiser for the Transport & General Workers Union in the Black Country, says the company has been trying to recruit Class 1 drivers for several months without success.
"Agency drivers had been used but the professionalism and commitment just were not there. We were kicking at an open door. The increase has no strings attached and has been implemented two months prior to the anniversary date of the pay talks."
He warns that with the average age of drivers generally now touching 50 and the Working Time Directive promising to make driver shortages even more acute after 2006, there is a desperate need to rethink remuneration packages.
"I think general haulage companies which pay 1250-2300-aweek are going to face big problems in recruiting and retaining people unless they up their pay by quite a lot," says Walsh.
But Mike Farmer, Midland and Western regional directc of the RHA, says the increase Chillington, where drivers ref resent a small fraction of th workforce, would not be poss de in the hire and reward sec tor where drivers make up th bulk of employees.
He adds that several largE companies in the region ar looking to see whether a systei of annualised hours could pro\ attractive to drivers. This wou guarantee a fixed weekly waE and offer the prospect of bonus at the end of the year the set quota of annual workir hours was exceeded.