Friday, May 11, 2012

Fair Work Australia - this is ridiculous

A protest against the big supermarkets who are "making truck drivers take risks", this World Today piece jabbed at FWA.


ADAM HARVEY: Well, the drivers might support the campaign, there's a couple of truck drivers down here amongst all the other union volunteers, but the companies obviously don't agree with what is being said.

I spoke with Danny Borg who is the managing director of Fred's Interstate Transport. Now Fred's is one of those four companies that have had about 1,000 charges laid against them and some charges have been laid against the directors of those companies. Police and the road's authority in New South Wales say that the high level executives are responsible for the breaches of their drivers.

Now Danny Borg doesn't agree with the Transport Workers Union. I spoke to him about that and about his responsibility for unsafe drivers.

Here's Danny Borg.

DANNY BORG: We've already had an instance here where a driver some time ago was found to be speeding. We went through the process with him; ultimately he was terminated and we found ourselves being sued by Fair Work.

I mean if a driver has been speeding and that is something that he has done off his own bat then the driver should be dealt with accordingly. It is a little bit rude I think to be accusing directors of tampering with speed limiters when, you know, they're home with their wives and children or you know at the office doing whatever they're doing.

It's much easier for them to try and beat me around the head and police me than it is to police every individual out on the road, I guess.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi there kae
Not sure where you are going with this, but as truckie I can assure you that quiet words are spoken to drivers on occasion when some cock-up/breakdown happened and the delivery must be on time.
Never as clear as to 'You have to speed if needed' but something like 'you won't be out of pocket.'

Also the company I work for keeps good records of our penalty points so only sends drivers on these missions who can afford to lose a few.

Make no judgment on the company you speak of but doesn't it strike you as strange that they had so many charges against them in the first place?
Overall I'm happy with my situation where I work.

Must admit we do have very strict schedules to stick to and the hours can be long and tedious driving from Brisbane to Perth, but it's a job and logbooks must be maintained, and quite frankly you'd be stupid overstretch yourself and kill someone for a job, so most of us are being sensible.

True, there will always be cowboys and bad bosses! Combine the two and you are waiting for disaster to happen.

truckie