Hi Tracey
At the point of my original contact, I had just resigned from the Company after 20 years service and was working my notice. I had cited a lack of integrity within the Company as one of the reasons for my resignation, Tachograph compliance being a constituent part of that lack of integrity. Having been put on gardening leave I was recalled back to work and given a Tachograph project by our District (UK & Nordic) Manager. This was supposed to be a high profile and important project but it would seem that the Company was trying to set me up a scapegoat for their Tachograph failings. For the majority of days that I was supposed to be working on the project I was sent out on road delivering. I did however complete a new MOP, not that the old MOP wasn't effective, and a training aid for the Company to use. This new MOP was not put into place, despite the fact that within a couple of weeks I had still managed to reduce my Centre's infringements by 49%, against the national average of 0.8% reduction. Follow-up meetings with my Division (Area) Manager were cancelled without notice and not rescheduled, any training suggestions that I made for our least best Centre's were ignored and I was kept on road for the sake of a relatively nominal number of deliveries and collections.
With my own Centre, there has been only a nominal amount of work done with Tachographs over the last year. This is no fault of the Tachograph Clerk who follows her instructions fairly rigidly, but the lack of follow-up to any infringements that take place, even to destroying the infringement letters that the Tachograph Clerk prints out for the drivers. As a Supervisor it was deemed more important for me to go on road delivering than following up on subjects such as Tachograph Training and Infringements. Productivity has been far more important to the Company than Tachograph and working time compliance. Drivers have been allowed to work through their breaks, despite this being highlighted 2 years ago, and then to take their breaks at the end of the day. The current decision made by my Division Manager is that all the small, odd breaks can be rolled together and counted as their full break. i.e. cigarette, toilets breaks etc.
According to our original Tachograph MOP there is "a legal responsibility of the employer to organise work loads so that drivers are able to comply with the drivers hours and Tachograph regulations." This has not happened. Drivers are deliberately overloaded to achieve greater productivity and in my opinion is also a contributory factor in the Company being 30% over plan on its accident's for 2011.
Another statement from the Division Manager is that the drivers choose to have infringements. By his own admission, the Division Manager has stated that there has been little feedback from all the Centre's in the country to their drivers about Tachograph infringements. How would some drivers know that they would have had infringements? There are daily and weekly e-mails that are sent out, and conference calls held, regarding the number of infringements that are occurring. (There has been little movement in these numbers) So the Centre managers have more information than the drivers have been receiving. Does the same logic therefore mean that the Centre Managers, their Division Managers, the UK & Ireland Operations Manager and ultimately the District Manager are all choosing to ignore the results & infringements that are occurring and are taking little action about the lack of compliance in the UK, especially bearing in mind that it took me only a couple of weeks to achieve significant results despite being out on road for the majority of the time.
I was initially wanting a meeting with someone from VOSA to clarify my interpretation of the Tachograph rules and regulations compared to that of the Company. Also whether my opinion on a lack of commitment to compliance would be similar to that of VOSA.
Todays quote, again from Lou Holtz
A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
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