Getting ready for growth
Bristol Port Co has started training apprentices to cater for the future expansion of the port
The Port of Bristol, which has just taken on ten new apprentices, has its own in-house training facility. It is also planning ahead; the port’s proposed deepsea container terminal will create 500 jobs.
“Where are the people going to come from to fill these vacancies?” says chief executive Simon Bird. “We are already starting to train them by bringing in new apprentices and new people to the workforce. Local skills are so important.”
Working with the unions is also vital, he says. “We are working together. I meet the senior union rep informally once a week and formally once a month. It’s a continual dialogue.”
As ITMMA's Professor Theo Notteboom points out, the history of the European port industry has been earmarked by labour disputes. “Most of the time, strikes were the result of disputes between labour unions (representing the interests of the dock workers) and employer organisations with respect to the terms and conditions for the renewal of collective bargaining agreements.”
Strikes, he says, whether short and isolated or long and port-wide, generate high hidden costs and can disrupt an entire economic system. They cause deviation costs for shipowners, time costs for ships in port, lost revenues for inland transport operators and other port-related companies, time and logistics costs for cargo owners and potentially high costs to factories if there are major disruptions in the production line.
Among other ‘hidden costs’ to be considered are those caused by accidents; a high accident rate typically points to a lack of training or impaired concentration due to chronic fatigue, and so on, says Prof Notteboom.
Meanwhile, the recession has clearly put a dampener on pay levels in the industry; there have been numerous redundancies and no pay increases for the past couple of years in some ports, says Ian Roots at Drake International.
However, Rob Bell, a logistics expert whose consultancy firm Archomai works with Hull University Business School, says that some areas are facing a real a shortage of necessary port skills.
In high-cost areas such as the southeast of the UK, a forklift truck driver may not be able to afford a house or the cost of living, he says. This, however, does not appear to be pushing pay up – perhaps because any shortage of labour can be compensated for by bringing in workers from elsewhere in Europe, he says.
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