Opinion: Is it the end of the Independent Owner Driver?

The Contractor Driver Minimum Payments Road Safety Remuneration Order 2016

While the Transport Workers Union celebrates the imminent Contractor Driver Minimum Payments Remuneration Order 2016 (RSRO) as a win, owner/drivers and small family-operated fleets across the nation are distraught at seeing what they say could be the end of their way of life.

Union Boss, Tony Sheldon, says that this statutory Order from the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal comes after a ‘long and hard-fought campaign’.

Yet the road transport industry is recoiling in horror at the implications of the RSRO which, it seems, caught many sectors unaware.

The Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal sat to consider this Order late 2015 and foisted it onto the road transport industry a few days before Christmas.

The Australian Livestock and Livestock Transporters Association (ALRTA), the Council of Small Business Associations and the National Farmers Federation have been reported as joining forces to oppose the April 4 implementation of the RSRO, calling the Order the ‘most significant regulatory change in decades to impact on owner-drivers and all businesses that rely on their services’.

ALRTA President Kevin Keenan has been reported as saying that the Order will ‘immediately price many owner-drivers out of the market’.

Regional media has bought in on the hysteria and fanned the flames.

Wagga Wagga’s Daily Advertiser quoted Dawson’s Transport boss Peter Dawson saying he will have to sack his two sons and replace them with employed drivers before April 4 and self-employed local livestock carrier Adam Manwaring saying: "It will shut me down, I won’t be able to pay my bills."

The National Road Transport Association (NatRoad) described the Order as ‘a crisis for the transport industry’ and has estimated that the rise in rates will be in the vicinity of 20 to 30 per cent and 'will send price shocks through and beyond the industry'.

If these economic projections from NatRoads, the ALRTA, COSBOA and the Australian Industry Group can be proven, then going back to the legal foundation of the Tribunal, the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal Act 2012, to Section 20, it could be argued that the Order is illegal under the Act in that the Order has not had sufficient regard to the likely impact on the viability of businesses in the road transport industry.

(Part of) Section 20 of the Act:

(1) In deciding whether to make a road safety remuneration order, the Tribunal must have regard to the following matters:

(a) the need to apply fair, reasonable and enforceable standards

in the road transport industry to ensure the safety and fair

treatment of road transport drivers;

(b) the likely impact of any order on the viability of businesses in

the road transport industry;

on the road transport industry, such as rural, regional and

other isolated areas;

(d) the likely impact of any order on the national economy and

on the movement of freight across the nation;

The imposition of the RSRO been clumsy and badly communicated by the office of the Tribunal. The reference areas proposed by Tribunal President Acton such as the Fair Work Ombudsman has been entirely unhelpful, repeating the mantra that the Ombudsman’s office has "no knowledge of the Order and staff is not trained to comment on it".

Under Section 21 of the establishing Act, the Tribunal is required to publish research undertaken or commissioned to demonstrate the improvements in road safety brought about by the RSRO.

If this research has been carried out, it certainly is not accessible with only a few weeks to go before the implementation of the Order.

Industry-wide interpretation of the RSRO seems to suggest that the change in economic structure will lead to one-truck and small fleet owner/drivers going out of business.

Besides keeping regional Australia going, this is the sector of Australian road transport that takes up the slack every time a big corporate fleet coughs, a sector that, statistically, has the best record in road safety.

A letter (that fell off a truck) from a Queensland-based logistics company to its service providers lays it on the line:

“As of the 4th of April xxxx xxxx will only be engaging vehicles that are driven by hourly paid drivers who do not own the driven vehicle. Owners who currently own multiple vehicles with drivers other than themselves in the vehicles will not be affected by the change.”

The Contractor Driver Minimum Payments Road Safety Remuneration Order 2016 proscribes minimum rates for contract drivers in urban distribution and long distance transport.

The Order sets out required hourly rates for owner drivers carrying out duties additional to driving such as vehicle checks, waiting time (queueing), loading and unloading, refuelling, attending to loads, rest periods of 30 minutes or less, completing documentation, waiting time on the road when held up by a natural disaster (eight hours out of each 24 hour period).

The RSRO also entitles these 'contractor drivers' to be allowed up to four weeks unpaid leave per year.

Some sectors of the industry are exempt: waste management, wharf and port container work, oil, fuel and gas transport and the ‘cash in transit’ industry.

That all sounds reasonable, but in many ways the proscription nature of the RSRO takes away the small business operator’s ability to work in a competitive market place (still the foundation of our economy last time I looked).

The implementation of the RSRO has been cumbersome, hidden from much of the industry and the content of the Order is ambiguous and the muddy terminology confusing.

The Tribunal has shown an inability to regard owner drivers and small family-operated fleets as independent small business people in their own right with relatively large personal investment in equipment and infrastructure, far exceeding that of many small businesses, individuals and families running retail outlets for example.

It is hard to imagine the government proscribing minimum incomes for these other sectors of small business.

In this case, the tribunal has refused to see owner/drivers as small business people, and the very terminology of the 2016 RSRO takes away the independence of this much needed sector of Australia’s essential reliance on road transport.

Opinion: Is it the end of the Independent Owner Driver?

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