Pay parity edging closer

News that JW Suckling tanker drivers are joining colleagues at ArrowXL in threatening strike action over pay is significant in that it is so unusual these days. Unlike train drivers who have been taking industrial action for months in support of their unspecified pay claim, truck drivers seem relatively happy with their lot.

This is of course because many received pay rises of between 15% and 20% last year as the HGV driver shortage reached crisis levels and a long overdue correction in wages had to happen.

Rather than going on strike, large numbers of HGV drivers, especially those from Eastern Europe, voted with their feet and quit full-time driving after the Brexit vote. Coupled with a hiatus in truck driving tests during the pandemic, the shortfall of drivers was put at anywhere up to 60,000 – around a quarter of the workforce.

The shortage is often attributed to the fact that truck driver wages began to fall behind comparable professions in the 1980s and 1990s as agency drivers – often the aforesaid

Eastern Europeans – began to eat away at the traditional direct employment model and collective bargaining between unions and employers.

It is said that 30 years ago train and truck drivers’ pay was almost on a par, but over the years the highly unionised rail workers began to see pay rising faster than their equivalents on the road.

According to employers’ body the Rail Delivery Group, the average train driver salary across the network is now £60,055, up from £44,985 10 years ago.

Until the pay hikes of last year, few truck drivers – except those driving petrol tankers or maybe car transporters – could dream of earning £60k per year – and even now there can’t be many employed drivers on that kind of money.

But £50k a year is now within reach for an experienced Cat C+E driver, and that doesn’t necessarily mean sacrificing family life by spending all week overnighting on the road. Split shift patterns now mean many more drivers can both feed and see their kids – and not before time.