(Mis)Representation? (15/11/2005)
While it’s quite usual for local associations to be deemed to represent ‘the trade’, this is a rather superficial view of things, and the reality is significantly more complex.
At Taxi Driver Online we recently received an email from a licensing councillor who said that, since the local ‘hackney association’ was supportive of his council’s approach, then he doubted our claim that those behind TDO were working taxi and PH drivers.
Leaving aside the fact that the views of those behind TDO might well differ from a local hackney association, and that the councillor implied that we were lying without a scintilla of evidence (an accusation that remains unsubstantiated despite us drawing the council’s attention to the issue), his point is perhaps symptomatic of the rather superficial view of the trade held by many, and the matter of representation is merely one facet of this problem.
One major issue is that formal representation in the trade tends to be fairly limited numerically – while in some areas a fair proportion of drivers belong to some kind of representative group, in others such organisations represent only a small proportion of the local trade, whereas in a few there is barely any formal representation at all.
Then there’s the question of who exactly these groups represent. There is certainly a tendency for local associations to represent vehicle owners and operators rather than the trade as a whole, and indeed drivers who do not own a vehicle may be ineligible to joins such organisations at all, or at best their interests play second fiddle to owners and office proprietors.
While at the local level there are a myriad of different scenarios, at the national level there’s certainly no doubt that the representative organisations tend towards the interests of the owners. Of course, the cornerstone of the National Taxi Association’s policies is the restriction of taxi numbers, with the effect that taxi drivers are forced to either buy a plate for a significant sum or drive a car belonging to someone else. If there are plateless drivers in the NTA then their interests are certainly not being represented unless, of course, they are hoodwinked into thinking that they get more work by having vehicle numbers restricted, whereas of course any extra income goes straight back out again to pay inflated rentals to taxi owners.
The T&G (and to a lesser extent the GMB) takes a similar stance, and when the union makes any public utterance about the rights of drivers what they often mean is taxi owners, with drivers just there to pay the inflated rentals which prop up plate premiums. For example, despite opposing increased taxi vehicle numbers in Manchester, last year the GMB’s representative there complained about a ‘shortage’ of drivers. Therefore more taxis on the road would be wholly acceptable if it meant incumbent owners’ vehicles on the road more of the time, irrespective of the fact that this would result in less income for drivers.
As for the other prominent national group - the National Private Hire Association - it seems to want to represent everyone, including anyone from the taxi side of the trade willing to pay the subscription. So, for example, while many PH drivers would like the opportunity to run their own taxi in restricted areas, the NPHA’s publication often flies the flag for restricted numbers, presumably to please the taxi and private hire interests that support the policy, while locally the body occasionally represents the taxi and private hire interests that don’t support the policy(!)
Thus to characterise ‘the trade’ as being of one voice is to misrepresent it, and just because a local or national association or trades union adopts a particular stance, that doesn’t mean that all those in the trade agree – going back to the point made at the outset, anyone in the local trade who doesn’t support the stance of the hackney association and the council are unlikely to join the association in the first place, thus to that extent the association’s position is unrepresentative.
Indeed, in normal industrial relations terms, it could well be said that trade organisations tend to represent the employers rather than the workers (which is rather ironic in the case of the T&G and GMB), and the workers tend not to be represented at all. Of course, this simplifies a complex scenario of numerous competing interests, but the only sizeable trade organisation in the UK that could truly be said to represent those at the coal face is the LTDA in London – the T&G and GMB are less National Union of Mineworkers than National Coal Board!
_________________ Taxi Driver Online
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