Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm going to quote words today from a very good friend of mine, Mike Williams. Mike Williams is a long-distance truck driver, very well-known in the trucking industry, and is also a co-host of the On The Road podcast. These are all his words, but I must say, out of respect, I've changed a couple of them because Mike does talk like a truckie, and there's nothing wrong with that:

I was driving down the Hume highway the other day and much to my surprise I looked over to the left and I saw a dirty great big billboard. It was put there by a G1 GDS from Mildura and they're looking for drivers and subcontractors and things like that and I'm thinking dear oh dear idea that's not what you would normally see it's certainly a little more permanent than an ad page in Big Rigs Magazine and it's a little bit more serious than a short spot advertising on a radio station or something like that.

So I was wondering what's going on. That is a big investment. Are drivers that hard to come by and I really think that they are. McCabes transport at Unanderra now are offering a $5000 sign on bonus. Now that's not unheard of; it's been happening in the West for a while, stay for six months and you'll get 10 grand in some of those businesses in the west but it's a common thing in the States to be offered sign on bonuses and there are also strings attached and I'm sure there are with McCabe's deal as well but we're at the point now where driver recruitment is becoming a real issue. People don't want to go out and drive trucks anymore. They don't wanna do long-distance work, they don't want to get out there and do it and we have to ask ourselves why that's the case.

Now I think I know the answer to that, I think the answer comes down to pay and conditions. If I've said it once, I've said it 100 times the kilometre rate in my opinion is simply wage theft. I don't care how you spin it, if you're not being paid for the work that you do then somehow or another someone's making a profit out of it, it's not you, it's not fair, it's not right. All the work that we do is measured in hours in our logbook. We all know that to be true. How the hell can anyone get away with paying you from GPO to GPO when you might be running from Eastern Creek to Dandenong.

It's not right and it's not fair. How then can they expect you to load and unload, wash your truck, fuel your truck and do all these things that are around your truck, sit for hours on end waiting around distribution centres because it suits whatever big box carter that you need to sit there and even more to the point now guys are going to sit in warehouses with fridge trailers running, with diesel being burnt at the price of diesel at the moment. How can anybody justify that, how can anybody think that it is even more remotely fair, remotely sensible, it's not, in no world is it sensible and the only people that are making any money out of this are the fuel companies, the mechanics.

You would like to think the bosses are making some money out of it but the drivers, the guys that are on the front end, that are actually doing the work, we are getting 5/8s of absolutely bugger all of a share of what's going on, we need to be paid by the hour with penalty rates, with overtime rates, with RDO's, with overtime paid for Saturday and Sunday and public holidays. Now some of us enjoy those things and I am one of them, I admit it but it's not that common, there are a lot of guys out there that are running on the Km rate.

And then of course if we look at the situation where we get guys who are getting into these bigger combinations now and they are paid cents on the dollar to drive a much bigger truck with more freight going into depots, they are expected, some of them to help out, they're expected to help unload and reload these things and they're not getting that much more money for it and they are suffering the added penalty of having to drive these things slower, a lot of them are speed limited to doing 90 on the East Coast, you can't do more than 90 in some of these PBS vehicles.

These pocket road trains they call 'A' doubles that we run over here on the East Coast now 90 km an hour, I mean put a 53 foot trailer on and you're only doing 90 km an hour. It's just not right, not fair. It's the drivers that are actually doing the work that are out there away from home, their families are sacrificing, we're the ones getting the log book fines, we're the ones getting the stupid clerical error fines, we're the ones actually out here at the coalface doing the job and the people that make the stuff happen. they jump into their car, go home and they've got toilets and all that.

Look at the crap we have had to put up with at Gatton, a place that really should have toilets and shower and all that of thing and they don't even bother to put them there. $18 Million they spent on that facility and what have we got there now a couple of plastic porta loos. It's a big step forward to nothing but it is no way good enough. Look at the rest areas that we've got, there are some really really good ones out there and some of us enjoy them and use them but the vast majority of places where you stop in this Country, no toilets.

There might be a rubbish bin, there might be a cement table with a half baked awning over the top of it. You've got blokes driving small cab over prime movers with no room, you can't put anything in them. No-one seems to get a custom interior in this country, I don't understand why not? It doesn't make any sense to me and we wonder why we can't recruit drivers, well we're not paying them enough, that's the first thing.

The conditions are terrible, people say to me "well don't be a truck driver then, we're not holding a gun to your head", well you know you're not. I personally love what I do, I drive, I get out there, I have a concert in my cab, I enjoy myself, I do my job, I'm lucky I've got a great job, work for a great company, and everything for me is quite happy.

But there are some guys out there that don't enjoy what I enjoy and my goal in life has always been to in some way or another make other guys lives more comfortable and I wanna point out that while you get people like G1 that are putting billboards on the side of the road, I honestly think if you look at the social media every man and his dog is after drivers.

Now I'm wondering if they have factored in the cost of all this recruiting in their turnover. Why are they having drivers walk away, drivers walk away from management, they don't walk away from truck driving. They give up their job because something is happening in that job that they can't live with and for some reason they can't talk about it.

Now that's on management in my opinion. If your drivers can't come to you and have a chat about what's going on their job, it's probably because you haven't told them that they can come to managers, that's on you!

Drivers leave managers, they don't leave trucking. What they do is take their very transportable skills, their very portable skills and give them to someone else. Whether it's for more money, better trucks, better conditions, a better lifestyle, more home time, whatever it is, businesses need to learn that the asset that they have, which is most important to them, is the good drivers they have.

I'm sure there are some companies who would say you know I don't care if Billy leaves, he's a pain in the butt, he's been a pain in the butt the whole time he's been here, don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out Billy.

I'm sure there are a few of those around and if that's your choice and if you want Billy to go, by all means let him go but I'm also sure there are drivers out there working for companies who the bosses would be heartbroken if they left and they're out there and they do do it, they do leave and they do go somewhere else. They don't quit trucking, they don't go and start playing marbles or professional golf or working in the shop, they genuinely take their portable skills and go somewhere else.

It's about time people need to realize and understand, the management need to understand that you're much better off to maybe spend a few more dollars on some trucks with better facilities in them or make sure that you're getting your drivers home on the weekend or doing whatever it is that you need to keep those good workers working for you, not taking their skills and not going somewhere else. This is stuff we need to talk about.

We really do need to get a handle on this. Driver recruitment, driver retention and driver training for me are the three biggest issues in transport right now, right up there with rates. If you're not getting paid the right rates, then you can't do any of the other three things.

That's the end of the quote from Mike. Mike and I stand shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip on this. And I will say something about where maybe I differentiate a little bit here. There are some very, very good employers who do pay a kilometre rate, and I will name Linfox—and I'll wait for the haters to start coming. In my home state of Western Australia—my son actually worked for Linfox at some stage—they pay a kilometre rate. They pay a very, very healthy kilometre rate. But they also make sure that their drivers do not load and unload. If for some reason they have to, they kick straight onto an hourly rate, which is way above the crappy award. And I will say this, too: some of the top drivers at Linfox turn over $180,000-plus. So, not all are bad, but the majority of those paying kilometre rates in our industry—it is criminal; it needs to be stopped.

And I'm going to say this very proudly here now. Now we've got Minister Tony Burke, who knows that this is a problem. Senator Sheldon and I have been banging on about this for the last 30 years. We're going to put a stop to this. If you're a good employer, you pay your people properly, and I know the good employers are on my side and agreeing with everything that I say and that Mike says as well.