Australia truck drivers discuss fight for safety, unions

BY LINDA HARRIS
AND MANUELE LASALO

SYDNEY — Recent counterposed actions by unionized fleet truck drivers and independent owner-drivers highlight the way the capitalist rulers try to pit working people against each other. They pose the challenge to the labor movement to win owner-drivers to the union and to rely on our own power and mobilization — not regulation by the bosses’ government — to unite and fight for better conditions.

Some 200 members of the Transport Workers Union blocked traffic here April 28, calling for the reinstatement of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal.

The Liberal-National coalition government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull abolished the tribunal April 18, the day after hundreds of owner-drivers from across the country demonstrated outside federal parliament in Canberra. They were protesting a tribunal order mandating minimum rates to be charged by some 35,000 owner-drivers, which took effect April 7.

The tribunal was set up in 2012 by the Labor government with the backing of union officials, to “regulate on safety” in the trucking industry. Transport Workers national secretary Tony Sheldon had argued that the higher rates would improve safety by addressing “pressure drivers are under to speed, drive long hours, skip mandatory rest breaks and skip maintenance on their vehicles.”

Owner-drivers at the Canberra protest saw the mandate not as a measure to advance safety, but as something that would price them out of business. “Safety is paramount for us,” Alina Hawkins told the Militant. She has driven cattle trucks in rural New South Wales for 10 years.

Many said they are already over-regulated. Some drivers, especially those who carry bulk loads from farms, often don’t have a full load on the return trip. The tribunal order forced them to charge full rates both ways, leaving some stranded while awaiting full loads.

Dave West, a Transport Workers driver who took part in the union protest, told the Militant he thinks truck drivers need the tribunal to regulate safety, but acknowledged its ruling had hit some owner-drivers hard. “The way forward,” West said, is for workers “in all different parts of the industry to come together.”

That gets at the heart of the challenge. Big freight companies and supermarket chains dictate conditions for thousands of drivers, cutting corners on maintenance and pressing them to cut delivery times. They use competition among workers and the attitude of many union officials — who view independent owner-drivers as the problem, not as fellow workers — to divide truckers and drive down conditions for all workers.

There are different economic layers among owner-drivers. Many are workers who own or are paying off one truck. Others have expanded to manage a small fleet. Capitalists foster illusions that the dream of “becoming your own boss” is open to everyone, so as to trick owner-drivers into identifying with management rather than fellow drivers.

An example of how class-conscious workers drew drivers owning their own trucks into an alliance with fleet drivers was set in the 1930s by the leadership of the Minnesota Teamsters. In Teamster Politics, Farrell Dobbs, one of the union leaders, describes how they were convinced that “those owning one truck, who did their own driving, should be approached by the union as fellow workers.” So they set out to organize as many of them as possible. Then “the union as a whole followed through by backing them in [their] struggles.” Dobbs concludes that this course “checkmated the divisive schemes of the bosses.”

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