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WA transport education plan follows roundtable

Driver shortage sparks industry push to attract young recruits

 

Efforts are underway to develop an education program to help encourage young people to enter transport meeting, following a meeting of Western Australian transport industry leaders today.

The Western Roads Federation (WRF) and Transport Workers Union (TWU) jointly held an industry roundtable in Perth today to discuss the growing shortage of truck drivers in WA and across the industry, with a wide range of industry groups represented.

WRF CEO Cam Dumesny tells ATN the driver shortage was becoming prevalent across the industry, from couriers and agitator drivers all the way up to multi-combination drivers, despite any incentives companies might offer.

“So we have fundamentally acknowledged the fact that as an industry we have to go back to grass roots and start targeting at the schools and make it an attractive industry to come into,” Dumesny says.

“At the end of the day, we are a product as an industry and we have to look at how we market our product.”

Dumesny says he and the WRF will put together a working group following the discussion in order to start working on some of the ideas that were tabled.

“We have agreed in conjunction with the union and other people we will put together a proposal that we will take to the state government about how we actually start to attract people into our industry,” he says.

“There are some other issues there they want to address, but that was the priority one we resolved to take away, and obviously to continue the process, because one meeting is not going to resolve it.”

The session was chaired by Senator Glenn Sterle, a former TWU official, who said he was pleased to see the diversity of groups attending the round table.

“It has to be industry driven – the industry is the only ones who is going to start this avalanche and get this momentum going,” he says.

“But those 35-40 people in that room today, they’re fair dinkum… I would go about saying that the next meeting, there will be even more people in the room.”

 

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