Starving the minicab driver?Wayne CaseyPrivate-hire serfdom can be painful if you are on the receiving end of the power of the operator. Fares are a particular bone of contention and additional vehicles on radio circuits very much come into play in the unfair scheme of things.
Fuel prices across the country have jumped by more than 70 per cent. In January 2005, the year of the Carlisle floods and a mere 7 years ago, the cost in the City for one litre of diesel was 84.9p, the same litre today will cost you £1.47.9p, it is the same across the country, yet if private hire drivers protest at their fares being kept artificially low, they will be given two options, and we know what they are.
In way of a response, the taxi trade has in general always sought moderate increases; realising competition with private hire is a consideration before requesting increases. Ironically research does seem to clearly find once this competition is eliminated, through delimitation of Hackney Carriage numbers, taxi prices take an ever upward spiral.
On the whole fare increases on private-hire radio circuits come as a reaction to increases in Hackney Carriage rates, more often than not private-hire prices are kept lower, perhaps justifiably so, as I have previously written, private-hire is a choice the public make each time they call for a private hire car – the public can be a difficult mistress – particularly if the prices charged are increased. However, these increases have little (if anything) to do with the running costs associated with operating a private hire vehicle - they are merely a few crumbs of comfort thrown – like a fellow in a park feeding a few morsels of bread to a few eager ducklings.
In general, very few radio circuits operate in a manner where their drivers are seriously considered, if drivers form co-operatives or try to unionise, such things are immediately deemed as threats, radio equipment is swiftly removed from the vehicles of the drivers who are deemed as trouble makers. Surely I alone cannot be shocked that in 2012 there is still virtually no representation at any level for drivers of private hire vehicles – suiting the operator whose power must remain absolute.
It’s almost as if Adam Smith was a private-hire operator, he wrote in the Wealth of Nations; the capitalist encyclopaedia;
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible, indeed, to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary. A regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names and places of abode in a public register, facilitates such assemblies. It connects individuals who might never otherwise be known to one another, and gives every man of the trade a direction where to find every other man of it.”Radio Circuits are additionally greedy to accept more cars without any thought for the amount of work they have, if drivers complain, again they are given a stark choice – some would argue it is the oversupply of private-hire that leads to private-hire vehicles illegally plying for hire.
Whilst recession often means a worse time for most businesses, it doesn’t necessarily mean a private hire circuit will find itself unstuck. Recession invariably leads to higher unemployment which inadvertently creates a greater labour pool to exploit. In generalised terms the commodity of the driver is less of an issue – unless of course there is what operators see as barriers to increasing the labour pool. It’s a language thing – what they call a barrier – you might call a standard.
A recent example comes from Transport for London (TfL), whom dropped plans to make all newly licensed drivers pass DSA driving tests at the bequest of Private Hire Operators – quite naturally, operators cited few complaints about their pseudo employees driving capabilities, in a remarkable move of such stupidity it caught TfL off balance (presumably through p*ssing themselves laughing) they also cited a DSA test was a test – but then – they would cite that wouldn’t they?
Perhaps TfL need to ask the family of Robert Scott about the driving standards of Imran Raja, a driver for Addison Lee, who deliberately ran the chap over and just kept right on going, until he was forced to stop by his passengers, he was subsequently jailed for three years during 2010, Robert Scott was apparently a tramp, one of those folks that sleeps on the streets of London and gets p*ssed on regularly by people who can afford to stay in the overpriced hotels – so presumably that’s why the sentence was a tad lenient.
Indeed, perhaps the family of Paul Unthank will be reassured that the drunken minicab driver that killed him and was jailed for 7 years, never had to pass a driving test in this country.
I don’t know about you, but I think Martin Sadler maybe could have done with a driving test, especially considering he slammed into John Tamele-Ssali, catapulting the parking attendant onto the bonnet of his VW Passat, hitting the windscreen with such force that it cracked, he rolled on to the bonnet before falling to the ground when Sadler finally came to halt after 15 yards.
Witness Aaron Rudd, who was working on a nearby pub, heard Sadler say: "He deserves it, the c*** gave me a ticket." However, moments later Sadler was seen repeatedly banging his head on the steering wheel, crying: "What have I done?"
In 2004 Private Hire Operators in London proudly boasted that medical standards for London’s minicab drivers were tougher than those for the drivers of Black Cabs, obviously this couldn’t continue, so TfL adjusted the requirement – well lowered it.
You see the lower the standard, the greater the depth of the pool. Do you people really think private hire companies are so into multiculturalism they actively recruit from abroad to increase their businesses ethnic diversity policy? When I receive emails from NTA members who are shocked that they are being offered, for the princely sum of £500, drivers from Rumania, I really must wonder - how on earth can that be right? Below is a sample of the email;
Do you need taxi / private hire drivers that work 6-7 days a week, and are smart and friendly?
Stop wasting time and money placing expensive adverts in the local press for drivers with the often resultant - four promising to attend, two actually arriving, one on day release from care in the community and one leaving after a week because he didn't realise he had to work weekends (sound familiar)?
Our rates - A flat rate of £500 per person. We offer European Union Member Drivers trained in Central or Eastern Europe for up to a month with conviction-free European Union member state driver's licenses fluent in English (we do not accept pigeon English) and eager to work bank holidays, evenings, nights and weekends.
All drivers would arrive with the required Certificate of good conduct extensive local knowledge with the ability to pass any local knowledge test a conviction-free driving history report a completed DVLA (level 2) medical form (all translated into English and verified as genuine by a Public notary), .
These drivers agree to repay ALL your costs in recruiting them and will sign a legally binding contract (ask for a sample) so in effect they pay, not you.
If you order 4 or more drivers you get 1 free driverThe facts of the exploitation are relatively simple, our east European colleagues (like virtually everyone else) are registered as self employed, thus have virtually no employment rights – no minimum wage – no holiday entitlements. That makes them the same as many of you? Not quite – unlike you, numerous numbers of these ‘pseudo–employees’ are tied to ‘employers’ who may also provide accommodation (at a cost) in order to have more power over them.
Consistent government policy has cited Europe for the free movement of labour, but as described, the increased labour pool for private hire ultimately keep their prices down – this certainly isn’t to the advantage of the pseudo employee – it’s all for the advantage of the operator. Please, before you call me a genius (or racist b*stard), as mentioned above, this was far more eloquently described by Adam Smith– whilst Smith was against such things as registers for fear that those on registers may get in contact with each other and organise themselves – his free market principles similarly suggested regulations and suchlike were against the interests of the market. Because people don’t bother reading the bits they don’t particularly like, the guy was seen as a guru.
Adam Smith further wrote; “
the wages of labour vary with the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense, of learning the business.” The principle when applied to private-hire is relatively simple; the wages should be poor because it is relatively easy to become a private-hire driver.
Going on from this it is clearly important to examine how the major majority of Private-Hire operators appear to be walking rough shod over various employment acts, they are seemingly committing fraud with the tacit approval of HMRC.
The government website
http://www.direct.gov.uk/ offers a description to help a person work out if they are employed or self-employed;
You are probably self-employed if you:
- run your own business and take responsibility for its success or failure
- have several customers at the same time
- can decide how, when and where you do your work
- are free to hire other people to do the work for you or help you at your own expense
- provide the main items of equipment to do your work
You are probably employed if you:
- have to do the work yourself
- work for one person at a time, who is in charge of what you do and takes on the risks of the business
- can be told how, when and where you do your work
- have to work a set amount of hours
- are paid a regular amount according to the hours you work, and get paid for working overtime - even if you do casual or part-time work, you can still be employed
There can be little doubt that the majority of private-hire drivers are ‘pseudo employees’, they have no control over the fares they charge, nor the customers they are ordered to collect by the operator and they seldom have the ability to go and work for another private-hire operator – if this happens they are unsurprisingly shown the door.
Of course this all means that drivers are working very often below the minimum wage and denied holiday entitlements – this disparity means the driver must do excessive hours in order to make a living wage. You don’t really need money (I guess) if you spend the majority of your life behind the wheel of a private hire vehicle.
As everyone is aware, the contract for hiring’s is between PH customer and the PH operator – although I’m pretty sure numerous PH operators would like this to change slightly – if they can be seen to be seen as some type of brokerage service – it could go some way towards legitimising the self employed status of their ‘pseudo-employees’. To the credit of the GMB PDB they have been fighting a valiant but losing effort in querying the self employed status.
I have said for quite some time the UK cab trade is about to be shafted in a grandiose fashion, and I still maintain that belief.
Ironically, whilst the SNP in Scotland are being lambasted for receiving in excess of £1million from Stagecoach tycoon Brian Souter – there was apparently no link between Souter’s donations and nationalisation of Scottish bus services being dropped from SNP policy whatsoever. John Griffen of Addison Lee was reported in February 2010 (by the Financial Times) as donating £100,000 through his Addison Lee minicab business in the belief a Conservative government would be "positive for business". He has subsequently donated more.
Rather curiously he stated in an article
“No Addison Lee driver has been found guilty of any offence with any passenger ever. Can the black taxis declare the same?” I did write above that tramps don’t count didn’t I? So once again the spin of the private-hire operator stands possibly true on a technicality, slightly less can be said towards his driver Imran’s attitude towards tramps I guess?
Again, whilst we have private-hire companies lining the pockets of political parties such relatively trivial matters as driver exploitation will never be seriously addressed, indeed, it could be suggested the forthcoming reform of ‘taxi’ laws may finally reward the seemingly cosy relationship between politicians and private hire.
One of the reasons I am against things like the NVQ is that it is merely an assessment, people don’t fail assessments, indeed people don’t fail knowledge tests and suchlike if the tester is bent and open to a little bung (that’s a Greater Manchester thing). Indeed if the test is run by those who are actually doing the recruiting – as it appears to be in some cases - I would seriously suggest unless a student takes his death list and stabby (his pet knife) along, the chances of failing are extremely limited.
However, I again digress, I more seriously believe, the basic things need to be correct first, before we dream up new hoops for people to jump through.
I wrote last month about the situation in Northern Ireland in respect of larger companies being virtual monopolies, I re-affirm this point and again quote Darryl Biggar because this is a very real situation across the UK; Biggar wrote;
“Larger cab networks have more available vehicles and are likely to be able to offer short waiting times on average. At the same time, since customers are attracted to calling a network that offers the shorter waiting times, the larger networks are likely to have more customers, thereby attracting more taxis to join their network.”The perpetual monopoly, which ultimately decimates competition.
The Hackney Carriage trade has seemingly always been on the defensive – it is very often claimed the excess demand during extremely busy periods (remember those?) have been as a result of too few cabs, the net result has often been more cab licenses are issued, unfortunately they are not only for the busier periods, but more importantly, the all too many slack periods.
When customers for taxis are in abundance, numerous private-hire apologists have cited private-hire illegally plying for hire as merely ‘picking up the slack’ which cannot be covered by the legitimate taxi trade. The Northern Ireland Taxis Act does actually take account of this slack period by merely legalising what would only be described as ‘pirating’ on this side of the Irish Sea , but the act is clever enough, as you might expect, to ensure the ‘Operator’ still get their pound of flesh through a reliance on radio subscriptions. If private-hire in Northern Ireland are in any way similar to their UK counterparts, no doubt they will have friends at Stormont, just as their English brethren have friends in Westminster.
source:
http://mrblackcab.proboards.com/
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