The critics in perspective the view from
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1#614, Capitol House
UNLESS the haulage industry is on the verge of a revolution, as promised in the article in last week's Commercial Motor, it will not survive.
Haulage is a forceful, thrusting, fiercely entrepreneurial industry. It is largely of this century and so concerned with its origins and its present state that it has so far given little thought for its future. . . All the evidence is that until the advent of the Road Transport Industry Training Board, the industry was insufficiently staffed to operate at its present level, let alone look to the future. And this inadequacy was not only quantitative but also qualitative.
Anybody trying to drag this industry into the 20th century and force it to look towards the 21st century must expect a good deal of criticism and complaint. From personal contacts, and information gained in the course of more than 100,000 visits each year to employers, the RTITB knows that many hauliers are making serious attempts to remedy the situation. These are the companies who are slogging away at the bard, unspectacular but infinitely rewarding job of providing for their future in terms of trained manpower.
Solid achievements The RTITB was set up on September 15, 1966. It has been operative—as regards training—for just over two years. Already in that relatively short period solid achievements in promoting training have been registered. The road haulage sector of the industry recorded a 25 per cent increase in the number of personnel undergoing training in the five-month period from August to December 1968 compared to the comparable period the previous year. In real figures this is 26,934 as opposed to 21,506.
Other achievements include: 2,500 managers have taken transport managers' courses at centres throughout the country including Motec; 35 road haulage group training schemes have been set up covering 19,700 employees; 413 trainees have taken h.g.v. driving instructor courses at Motec 1 (plus 79 in London and Scotland); Four of the 12 training recommendations so far published by the Board for managers, clerks, goods vehicle drivers and apprentice mechanics are directly relevant to the Road Haulage sector.
The first grant scheme of 1967/68 recognized virtually any standard of training as being grant-worthy. A tighter standard was applied with the introduction of the 1968 /69 scheme and still tighter standards are now being applied for 1969 /70.
Since its establishment, the Board has emphasized the significance of standards as a major factor in its overall training policy. Now it is in a position to implement that policy. In the process, however, we have been criticized for first giving money away too freely and now for not giving it away freely enough.
Some criticism arises from the Board's wish to recognize on-the-job training. Throughout the road haulage industry, with few exceptions, such training was no more than prolonged exposure. The Board has encouraged short systematic training for operatives to achieve economic and effective training. The result has been arguments about training times and, in particular, about "practice"—which so often means the ability to attract grant for unchanged training habits.
In the past two years the Board has learnt what training has meant in the industry in real terms. This has ranged from well structured and effective training (the significant minority of companies) by way of well-intentioned fuddy-duddyism in companies which should know better, to ludicrously inept attempts to maximize grant by presenting poorly produced circus acts. The Board now has both the experience and resources to mean what it says—and paying grants for approved standards is the only way of controlling the levy rate, bearing in mind that 90 per cent of Board expenditure is on grant payments. Cashing in on grant payments has been an out-of-date form of entertainment for a year now. It is the Board's experience that the industry does not believe the statements we make and then starts to complain when the Board puts them into effect.
The crux of the matter is that the basis of complaints is money, not training. Talk about "haggling" is, in fact, talk about unsuccessful negotiation by the industry to gain the Board's approval for its existing practices. Even the Road Haulage Association itself, which has established a training Liaison Committee (and if it was an RHA spokesman who described it as a complaints committee, his slip is showing), devotes its attention to discussion about grants rather than training. Any Board officer can recall situations in which acquisitiveness about grant has been thinly disguised as sanctimonious sermonizing about training.
Commercial Motor, in my opinion, is not the place to discuss the training problems of individual companies. Those mentioned in last week's article have widely divergent attitudes towards training. The tanker operator has done some pioneer work in driver training and would have a place in the top 10 for driver training if nine companies with comparable training standards could be found. By contrast one of the others, and a very big one, has stated that it is not its policy to train drivers.
Newcomers' task The Board has recruited and trained its field staff in a relatively short time. As newcomers they have had the task of making themselves known and implementing the Board's policies, backed by the training specialists based on Capitol House. Some of the criticism of the field staff seems to depend on the theory that in order to run a poultry farm you need to be a Rhode Island Red. Their job is not to run industry—it is to advise on training and the great majority do this knowledgeably, conscientiously and professionally.
Motec 1 is an unqualified success and has attracted enthusiastic support from the industry and it is over-subscribed. Its primary purpose is to provide training facilities which would not otherwise exist and which are for the benefit of the smaller and medium sized firms in particular. With an annual throughput of 6,000 trainees, most of whom spend a week there, it does not seem unduly lavish provision for the million workers in the road transport industry. Those who have been, and the employers who sent them, have taken the trouble to express their appreciation of the benefits they have thereby been able to take back to their work. One of the Board's most severe critics recently changed his attitude when his son excelled on one of the Motec courses.
In implementing its overall training policies the Board is an agent for change. But it recognizes that there is an inevitable resistance to change. In this respect, long-established customs and practices are poor taskmasters: rather do they engender criticism of any proposed changes particularly if such changes include the need for higher standards.
In the article last week we were told that the haulage industry is on the verge of a revolution. The real revolution will be concerned with more professionalism, higher efficiency, better safety standards in an industry whose future must not be imprisoned by the policies which may have been adequate in the past.