Fighting threat to jobs and truckie businesses

MARCH 22, 2016: THE fight is on to protect the livelihoods of owner driver truckies whose future hangs in the balance over a disastrous ruling by a tribunal established by the former Gillard Labor government and stacked with Labor appointees.The Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, a body set up by the previous Labor Government, has ruled that owner driver truckies can only be engaged by clients at a minimum payment rate, which is above that of employee truck drivers, effectively pricing them out of business.While the new rate is set to take effect from 4 April, both owner drivers and the Federal Liberal National Government have intervened to request the start date be pushed back until next year to enable further consideration of a move that could put thousands of owner drivers out of business.The government is not legally able to overturn the tribunal’s decision nor can it abolish the tribunal because to do so would require legislation which would not get the support of Labor and the Greens and would therefore not pass the Senate.We all agree with road safety but this isn’t about road safety.What’s happened here is that a Labor-established and Labor-stacked tribunal has set a minimum payment rate for owner driver truckies, which will effectively price them out of business so the only people driving trucks are employees who can be signed up to a union… and that’s the real intention.If this was about road safety the same rate would apply to everyone, not just owner drivers.If the proposed new rates come into effect, it would be hard to see if an owner driver truckie would ever be used for freight delivery again.People’s livelihoods are in the balance here and so are local jobs as many local trucking firms are only able to be profitable because of the owners or the owners’ family members driving the trucks as well as employees.If the owners and their family members are no longer able to drive because they’ve been priced out of the market by some bureaucratic tribunal, then businesses will shut down and locals will lose jobs.So, far from being a safe rate, imposing something like this that destroys people’s livelihoods is more likely to lead to depression and suicide, or alternatively illegal activity.And this is not just what I think; this is what the truckies have told me.The Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal will be considering the request by government and owner drivers to delay the new rate’s start date over the next few weeks.If the tribunal says no to the request to delay the new rate start date then, on April 4, this new regime comes into effect and owner driver truckies have told me they will go bust and they will have to lay people off.The tribunal needs to extend the introduction of these rates to give truckies more time to prepare for such a change; however I think the government will have to deal with this via legislation eventually anyway because it’s so grossly unfair and damaging to the economy and people’s livelihoods.