Robinson: a tough act to follow
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IVERPOOL is a city with a forlidable industrial relations reutation. Tales of past troubles 1 the docks and car factories nd of continuing battles berveen left-wing local politicians nd central Government have .?ft it near the bottom of many iclustrialists' lists of possible reas for fresh investment.
Superficially, one might think he same applied to road laulage. The city's highly-orgalised 6/541 group of the Transiort and General Workers' inion has been consistent in vinning high annual pay settlenents for hire or reward driv:rs, and is still at the top of the eague for drivers whose pay is )egotiated collectively.Not mly that, it also has the high.ist guaranteed weekly rate — msed on 50 hours' work paid it 55 plain-time hours — and he highest overnight sub;istence payments.
But these deals have been Non in a highly-civilised manler, in which trades union and employer representatives treat each other with the maximum mutual respect possible in an atmosphere in which each side is looking for a bargain which gives the most to its members. Much of the credit for that lies in the TGWU's recently retired road transport group district secretary, Bob Robinson, who has led the union side since collective negotiations started in 1974.
He has been involved with transport all of his working life. He spent the Second World War as a tank driver, then served aboard the passenger liners which once formed an integral part of Liverpool life, and came ashore in the early Fifties to work as a lorry driver, first for a sand and gravel company, then with Liverpool Corporation.
Active involvement in the National Union of Seamen and the TGWU led him to become a full-time district officer with the TGWU's road haulage group in 1959. Eleven years ago, he was promoted to district secretary with a team of four officers reporting to him. At that time, there were 11,000 members in the group; today, Liverpool's decline has reduced that to 5,000, 85 per cent of whom are hire or reward haulage employees.
Bob is of the traditional school of trades unionism which places the interests of his members before any personal political ambition on his part. He also is a well-read, charming and witty man with a keen appreciation of the problems facing Liverpool employers as well as the aspirations of the city's lorry drivers. The hauliers who have faced him in negotiations know he is no push-over, but they acknowledge his professional approach to the discussions and know they can depend on the union keeping its side of a bargain once it is struck.
He is modest in saying that the TGWU's success in securing high and watertight agreements in Merseyside owes less to his ability than to the organisation of the membership. The 6/541 branch is nothing if not active. Monthly meetings held on Sundays in the prestigious fransport House in the city centre regularly draw in between 350 and 400 drivers, even when pay is not on the agenda. And there is no need to have special attractions
Bob Robinson: From tank driver to union officer.
laid on to lure the crowds.
The core of its success, he believes, is the fact that the 13strong committee is highly representative of its members' feelings. Most committee members are shop stewards in Liverpool haulage companies, and they invariably have the full backing of the membership. A recommendation from the committee is seldom overturned, and that gives employers confidence when talking to the committee.
"We always communicate with the membership. Because they are prepared to support the committee with muscle, the employers take cogniscance of the committee," Bob told me.
To support its record of 100 per cent adherence to the agreement, the Liverpool membership has led the country in introducing heavy goods vehicle driver identity cards which prove — particularly at Liverpool docks — that drivers are paid in accordance with the current agreement.
Shop stewards are charged with collecting printed copies of the annual agreement as soon as it is ready, and they notify Transport House as soon as employers have agreed to pay the new rates. Even owner drivers sign the agreement, although the possibility of an owner driver taking industrial action against himself for failing to pay himself the agreed rate must be remote in the extreme. "It is a bit of a nonsense," Bob admits, "but it's no skin off my nose. The committee wanted it."
The cards are issued for a two-year period, but must be returned to Transport House after a year for validation. That is made only if the driver's employer has signed the new wage agreement, and periodic checks on cards soon show up where a company is not paying the rate. No identity card could mean no attention at the docks or other industrial premises.
Bob has also been co-ordinator for the TGWU's haulage wage negotiations throughout North-West England from Barrow to Greater Manchester and the Derbyshire High Peaks. But he admits that the looser organisation of the union there has contributed towards what he describes as a "sordid story" which has cost drivers their place in the wage league.
For the past two years, the Road Haulage Association's members outside Liverpool have insisted that they will only negotiate with the TGWU if it is prepared to be accompanied by the United Road Transport Union, which is still a strong force in parts of the region.
"The members decided they didn't want any truck with the URTU," Bob told me, and officers have been left to reach individual agreements with companies. Their success has been limited, and Bob hopes it may be possible next year for collective negotiations to be reactivated, even if it does mean joining with the URTU around the bargaining table. "It needs a positive decision by the lads, but if they wanted it, it would be fairly easy to organise," he said.
The lesson from the Liverpool experience is one which should be followed across the country, Bob argues. From a trades unionist's point of view, he says it is a nonsense for wage negotiations to be conducted by 23 bargaining groups across the country. "One of our failings is that we have never been able to persuade the RHA to meet the TGWU in national negotiations."
He admits it is ironic that the Road Haulage Wages Council was abolished at the behest of the TGWU. "Now, certain of us in the TGWU have said the current system is not working." He wants to see national negotiations, led by TGWU national commercial group secretary Jack Ashwell and another fulltime officer, and supported by active shop stewards from each area meeting national representatives of the RHA.
The idea might not appeal to all factions in the RHA, but he believes that employers in high-wage areas, like Liverpool, would support it as the present system leaves the way open for low-cost competitors to poach traffic from high-wage areas.
He is already aware of that problem. "Liverpool employers already say to me: 'Bob, the more you push us on lad, the more we become uncompetitive'."
His own members also have reservations about national negotiations, if they meant any fall in their living standards. That ought not to happen, he argues, if members in each area are involved as closely in the decision-making process as they already are in Liverpool: "With a little bit of wit and intelligence, we could do it."
A further weapon in the 6/541 group's armoury against low-wage rates is its outright opposition to the employment of agency drivers. Bob Robinson believes that driveremployment agencies of today are no more than a modern equivalent of street-corner casual hirers of labour. In his view, they lower the standards of the industry, and he has refused one agency's offer to pay drivers £1 above the Merseyside rate in exchange for union recognition.
At that time, he told me, some tanker drivers were taking advantage of their short working weeks to hire themselves out to agencies as a source of casual labour.
Bob appreciates that an operator has a real problem if a staff shortage threatens to put vehicles off the road, so the TGWU operates its own alternative to an employment agency by maintaining a register of unemployed drivers in Liverpool. It is run by a committee member and there is an unwritten understanding that companies which sign the Merseyside agreement will approach the union, and not agencies, for drivers.
Although employers have mixed feelings about the idea of the register, Bob's claim that it is run fairly is borne out by those hauliers who have used it. He says it gives employers the knowledge that they will have no union problems over the recruitment of a temporary driver, and the register is run in a scrupulously fair manner. "There is no nepotism, no inlaws or outlaws."
His strong views against agency labour are equalled only by his objection to sleeper cabs. "Ours is the only industry where a fella sleeps on his job." He does not object to the provision of sleeper cabs, simply to their use, and insists that the union's opposition to them is founded on a genuine fear for drivers' welfare and not bloody-minded restrictive practice.
Some sleeper cabs, he argues, are like coffins. "Having done a 10-hour day, eight of ii driving, flogging down motorways, what way is that to rest? The space is so restricted.
"When you are in an industry which is so dependent on recognising the safety of the public — and the 1930 Road Traffic Act was all about road safety — and are doing high mileages, then have a meal and climb into a bunk, it doesn't alert us to safety."
Although union rules make it possible to fine drivers £30 for sleeping in their cabs, Bob re cognises that there always will be a "cowboy element" which will pocket its overnight subsistence allowance and sleep in cabs, regardless of the standard of available overnight accommodation.
He also is enough of a democrat to admit that a referendum ought to be held to establish drivers' true opinion of sleeper cabs, even if the result contradicts his own welfare-based views. Were a brief, structured argument against sleeper cabs to be circulated along with a ballot form, then a debate could be initiated at branch level to reach a true measure of the drivers' opinions. "The only intelligent way to do it is to have an internal look at TGWU drivers' views."
The lesson should be learned from the eventual collapse of TGWU opposition to the installation and use of tachographs. From a stance of outright opposition to the fitting of tachographs (which effectively meant the union breaking the law), Bob recalls that the union had to get itself off the hook and asked its members to vote on whether or not they would take industrial action against the installation of tachographs.
The three-to-one 'no' vote was no surprise and Bob feels it made the union look silly.
Whatever happens with sleeper cabs, Bob believes that overnight subsistence payments will remain part of the wage structure. The union argues in favour of them partly because they cover drivers' necessary away-from-home expenses in the same manner as those of company sales representatives. "A driver doesn't always want to stay in digs at night with other drivers and talk shop." He may want to go out for a drink, watch a film or phone his wife.
The subject of subsistence payments provokes chuckles as Bob recalls how he had a brief period of national fame among haulage drivers as an alleged expert on how to obtain tax rebates against meal expenses. A tax inspector at St James Street in Liverpool had explained to him how drivers could claim back tax for meals away from home, but Bob eventually got the Inland Revenue into a "blue funk" by sending out advice notes to drivers on how to claim for this.
The Inland Revenue's insistence on getting drivers to send in receipts led to some trying to pick discarded receipts off the floors of cafes across the country, and drivers from all over started to contact Bob to solve their meal allowance That, and a colleague's current concern about the stability of articulated lorries hauling Octel containers and of the problem of vehicles losing wheel studs, underline Bob's belief that the TGWU concerns itself with affairs of a wider nature than just its members' wages and conditions.
There also is an area in which Bob believes the TGWU and RHA have a common interest. He would like to see the union become more active in scrutinising copies of Applications and Decisions and opposing operator licence applications from companies with a dubious pedigree. He feels that union officers, hampered by other commitments, have lost a golden opportunity in not opposing some firms' plans. "We have got a big stake in the industry.
"I believe we could work closely with the RHA on it. We could tip each other off."
These are all matters for Bob Robinson's successor to tackle when he is appointed. In the meantime, Bob is looking forward to an active life doing more than just tending his South Liverpool suburban garden or catching up on the home decorating his wife has mapped out for him. At 61, he is too old to serve as a magistrate, and a policy of appointing lay members rather than retired officers to the union posts on industrial tribunals precludes what would have been a stimulating role for him. He is thinking of doing voluntary work if nothing else comes up.
Just as he will miss his dealings with Liverpool hauliers — "It's no fun being a road haulage operator in Liverpool," he told me — they will miss his extremely professional and dignified, if tough, approach to industrial relations.