ITF highlights multinationals’ role in European trucking crisis

The programme heard that 11,000 truckers had been caught illegally working more than their allowed hours in the UK in the previous year. The ITF explained that it was the pressure from the multinational retailers at the top of the supply chains that was causing the issues.  

Listen to the BBC 5 Live Investigates news report. (The story starts at 05:12 and the ITF appears at 41:03) 

The ITF and its unions across Europe have long been concerned about the exploitation of truck drivers and the violations of regulations in the European supply chains of multinational retailers.  

In the programme, ITF strategic researcher Sean Sayer said: “The [multinational] retailers are tendering contracts at lower and lower values. These lower value contract can only be accepted by hauliers willing to exploit drivers and violate the regulations. This causes a race to the bottom in the industry – you have illegal competition, depressed freight prices and wages ultimately falling.  

“And who does the pressure fall on? Well, it's the drivers. They are the ones who now have to work for months continuously. They're encouraged to drive tired and sometimes unwell. A few drivers we spoke to were even paid by the number of kilometres driven. You can imagine the effect on health and safety - it's absolutely disastrous. Ultimately this just leads to unsafe roads.”  

The ITF spoke to Eastern European drivers in the UK who had been forced to drive at the end of each week from the UK to Belgium and the Netherlands to take a few hours’ break before returning to work another week in the UK, in order to avoid the regulations.   

Pressure is growing on companies who don’t respect workers and the rules. ITF union the BTB in Belgium recently published its third investigation into social dumping – the practice of recruiting workers from low wage countries to work in high wage countries, but continuing to pay them the low wages. Read more. 

As a result of trade union campaigns, the ITF and IKEA began talks earlier this month to eliminate exploitation in the company's European supply chain.