Keeping in touch
Page 19
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A criticism commonly levelled at managers of bus undertakings is that they seldom or never sample their own services. For obvious reasons, one does not hear this complaint about goods transport operators, but in a different sense it is a criticism which might nevertheless be justified. How many haulage managers or own-account transport and distribution executives ever go out to see the conditions in which their drivers work, eat and rest, and the situations with which they typically have to cope on their own initiative? Very few, we would guess.
In some cases such direct fact-finding might meet union resistance but there are many others where it would not. Yet the boss is content to let a work-study officer, for example, assess the productivity of which the employees are capable. And often, it seems, it is only on such occasions that the trade union official takes an on-the-spot interest in what is being said and experienced by his members when they are up the road (unless of course he is a working charge-hand who shares their life at the wheel).
As we found when we made a trip, reported in this issue, to talk to the night trunkers, the British lorry driver has lost none of his strong opinions. Employers, managers and even trade union officials may think some of the drivers' opinions ultra-conservative or ill-informed. But some are pertinent and valid and as for being ill-informed, whose fault is that likely to be?
There is a strong groundswell of opinion among drivers. In charting future developments and in avoiding unnecessary trouble, it is opinion that is well worth operators and union officials taking some trouble to hear.