Street chaos to fight cabotage?
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• Calls for a dramatic campaign of creating chaos on Britain's roads, to alert the public to its fight against the introduction of cabotage, were made this week at a meeting of the Transport and General Workers Union.
Delegates at a special anticabotage seminar, held at the Union's biennial conference in Scarborough, suggested that drivers abandon motorways and use their vehicles to block town and city streets in a bid to grab media attention. At the same time, MPs should be persuaded to plaster House of Commons order papers with questions on cabotage.
The TGWU is trying to step up its campaign against cabotage (CM, 6 June), which would allow operators from other EEC countries to carry out domestic haulage work in, the UK from 1992. After the failure of the TGWU's go-slow last September against the current driver's hours, delegates at the meeting called for much tougher action to defeat cabotage.
Union members at the meeting heard Les Hucicfield, the TGWU-sponsored MEP for Merseyside East, describe cabotage as "The theft of your jobs".
Huckfield warned delegates that "If cabotage is introduced, hauliers from any EEC country can come in, undercut your wages and working conditions, and take your jobs. "The Government is trying to sell the scheme by telling us that domestic hauls will be limited to a couple of trips, but there is nothing the Department of Transport can do about Continental hauliers that step out of line — the monitoring and checking of Continental lorries is so loose, they could do far more than two trips," asserted Huckfield.
The MEP also cautioned that if the cabotage proposals go through, British drivers will find themselves in competition with other Continental drivers "who abide by no drivers hours laws".
Huckfield claimed, "There will be foreign drivers who think nothing of spending 300 clays away from their bases", and UK hauliers will also have to compete against "Operators who don't pay half the fuel tax we pay in Britain, and don't operate to British maintenance standards. When they get rid of checks at frontiers when lorries enter the country, how on earth are we going to know who is coming in and how much work he is doing?"
Plans for extending cabotage to the PSV industry were also attacked by Huckfield who claimed that "If the proposal is extended to bus and coach operators as it is intended, the public must be warned that this will mean more deaths on our roads."
Delegates at the conference were expected to vote this Tuesday on a motion calling for the rejection of cabotage in the format being pursued by the EEC, and calling upon UK authorities to protect and safeguard job security for TGWU members working in hire-and-reward haulage.
TGWU national commercial road transport officer Jack Ashwell says the union needs to educate employers as well as drivers.
"In 1992 cabotage is due to be introduced and in 1993, the Channel Tunnel is scheduled to be completed. Both could mean the death of the road transport industry as we know it."
"European countries are looking for the opportunity to exploit a market — Britain is that market."