Driving the greatest cause of worker deaths

The Transport Workers’ Union has called on the Government to urgently address workplace deaths among transport workers after a new Safe Work Australia report shows that almost one out of every four workers killed in the last 13 years was a transport worker.

Last year, 42 road and rail drivers died at work. Since 2003, 754 workers died in the transport, postal and warehousing industry. During this period, 583 truck, bus and taxi drivers died.

“The government is simply not responding to the unacceptable risk transport workers are facing. It is every workers’ right to come home safe and yet these workers are expected to risk their lives while doing their jobs,” said Michael Kaine, TWU acting national secretary.

“There are pressures on truck drivers that make their jobs dangerous: they are forced to speed, drive long hours, skip mandatory breaks and overload their vehicles all because retailers and manufacturers are cutting costs and lowering transport contracts. This has a real effect and people are dying trying to deliver their goods. It has got to stop,” Mr Kaine added.

In a recent ten-day period three truck drivers died, two in a head-on collision in Sydney’s west and one in a roll-over west of Toowoomba.

“The Federal Government’s own report released this year acknowledges the risk to drivers’ lives. It also shows a system of safe rates, where drivers are paid minimum rates for all their work, would cut truck crashes by 28%*. Yet the Government is opposed to this and as a result, it is families and the wider community which are bearing the brunt,” Mr Kaine said.

In the 10 years to 2014 over 2,500 truck drivers and other road users died in truck crashes.

Notes

1. Safe rates

In April the Federal Government abolished a system backing safe rates that was holding clients such as retailers, banks, oil companies and ports to account for low cost contracts, which do not allow their goods to be delivered safely. This was despite the Government’s own reports showing a link between road safety and the pay rates of drivers and that the safe rates system would reduce truck crashes by 28%*. An Order delivering safe rates for the first time was in operation for just two weeks before the entire system was torn down.

2. Evidence of pressure

A Safe Work Australia report in July 2015 showed that:

- 31% of employers say workers ignore safety rules to get the job done.

- 20% accept dangerous behaviour, compared to less than 2% in other industries.

- 20% of transport industry employers break safety rules to meet deadlines – this compares with just 6% of employers in other industries.

3. Low pay

Many owner drivers are not making enough to get by as it is with average income of just under $29,500 and 29% of them underpaid (this is based on an analysis by PriceWaterhouseCoopers of the 2006 census which was included in the regulatory impact statement for the Road Safety Remuneration Bill 2011). Transport companies are consistently in the top five industries for insolvency, with the vast majority of them small firms with five or fewer full-time employees.

4. Bankruptcies

According to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, transport operators have one of the highest rates of insolvencies of any industry and small firms of five full time employees or less are the most likely to go bankrupt. In the financial year to June 2015 there were 275 insolvencies among these small operators. In the financial year before that there were 548 insolvencies. The main reason for the insolvencies was inadequate cash flow.

5. Suicide

Suicide is currently rampant among truck drivers. A study by Deakin University showed 323 truck drivers committed suicide between 2001 and 2010. (Suicide among male road and rail drivers in Australia: a retrospective mortality study). An analysis by the Victorian coroner’s court showing truck drivers had the highest number of suicides out of any other profession, with 53 drivers taking their own lives between 2008 to 2014.

Source: http://www.tandlnews.com.au/