Tip truck drivers across Victoria are this week taking action against what is being described as “dangerous” pay rates and conditions.
The strike, initiated by Victorian Tippers’ United (VTU), started yesterday with hundreds of drivers walking off the job and rallying out the front of Victorian Parliament.
VTU spokesman Luke McCrone says he believes the Victorian government can do better to protect tipper drivers by lifting minimum standards across the industry.
“The state government has powers under the Owner Driver and Forestry Contractors’ Act to enforce minimum standards for owner drivers and we’d like them to do so,” McCrone told OwnerDriver.
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“We think they have these powers and we want them to exercise these powers. Whether it be overbooking trucks on jobs or underpaying on rates, this could be addressed with correct minimum conditions.”
Currently, the Act only allows the government to set recommended rates on state government jobs. However, it can also enforce minimum conditions on non-government jobs, which is the basis of the VTU’s strike out the front of Parliament yesterday.
McCrone says this issue has escalated to the point that rates for tipper drivers are about half of what they were 18 months ago, meaning drivers are struggling to make a profit and are having to consider receiving finance for their truck before they can sell it off.
While doing so, McCrone says hirers have taken advantage of these vulnerable drivers by continuously “chopping” rates, leading to the VTU’s stand this week.
Among the calls for the state government to raise minimum standards are demands for an eight-hour minimum to be instilled to ensure drivers aren’t called out for a full day, only to work four or five hours.
The strike has been taken to the site of the North East Link project today, where McCrone says the best way to attract government attention was to take action at the massive infrastructure project.
“While the North East Link project may have better rates than elsewhere, they’ve been putting drivers on hold or giving us half days, meaning we sit around waiting for hours without pay for them to decide if they run the job or not,” McCrone says.
“Their decisions have made our jobs more dangerous and they’ve done this without any consultation or care that it’s risking our livelihoods.
“The rest of the week we’ll spend going out to tip sites and talking to owner-drivers who haven’t joined us yet, so we can encourage them to consider what is happening.”
McCrone says the VTU have been talking to large plant hire companies for about a year about the cost cutting occurring, with the VTU going so far as to encourage roughly 600 owner-drivers to write to them calling for an increased rate. These calls were ignored, with no one receiving a response.
“They didn’t give a rat’s ass about our letters – for us, what makes it so bad is these people go out and win the work but they don’t have the responsibility of running the truck,” McCrone says.
“They take a 15 per cent commission on everything we earn, so if they don’t get a job initially then they can drop the rates – they don’t have to consider covering the diesel costs or paying for the truck. It’s like a free market on steroids.”
While McCrone says tipper drivers can keep their operations together for anywhere between two and six months under these conditions, if something goes wrong with the truck then drivers are left stranded with no reserve money to pay for repairs.
“We’re spending this money on keeping our body and soul together, and people are now at breaking point,” he says.
“All contracts should be 20 per cent higher than the current hourly hire rate that we’re seeing. We also need to stop being put on hold.”
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