New road freight tribunal launched

The state government has established a new road freight tribunal within the Western Australia Industrial Relations Commission to settle disputes between transport owners and drivers.

The Road Freight Transport Industry Tribunal comes into effect today with its main function to hear and determine disputes between transport owner/drivers and those who hire owner drivers.

This includes enquiring into and dealing with matters that arise in the negotiation of owner/driver contracts.

A code of conduct is being established by the Road Freight Industry Council and the tribunal can deal with disputes asserting that there has been non compliance with that code.

Although this tribunal deals with owner-drivers, it will have many of the powers that the Industrial Relations Commission has when it deals with disputes between employees and employers.