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Returning to the UK..Fill up with fuel ! .


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[quote user="woolybanana"]

No, the strikers should be made responsible for the consequences of their acts. The strike is a vicious political act and unnecessary and before they withdraw labour, the strikers should know that they are going to cause real hardship even put lives at risk. These are not poor downtrodden workers but well paid opportunists.

[/quote]

Isn't the strike over health and safety issues ?

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elf & safety is just a smoke screen to cover the financial demands generated by the union lefty leaders in order that they will subsequently improve their own pensions, loans and payments in kind above the pawns in their game; not unlike the miners who were driven into the valley of doom by Scargill while his own pension, property rights and payments were elevated beyond belief. As a one time union member I for one don't subscribe to their politics.
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Payrise, no, it isn't about a payrise of £9000 a year, far from it. This driver sums it all up quite well.

 

http://www.leftfootforward.org/2012/03/fuel-strike-dispute-view-from-drivers-cab/

 

What it means is that currently these drivers are picking up approx £1800 month and those working for the small companies are picking up just over a £1000 a month, and as pensioners many may live on this, but young people with families will struggle.

 

I would be enraged if I ended up with the wrong fuel in my engine. It simply should not happen.

 

This is the article:

George Osborne was yesterday trying to turn the fuel strike dispute into a battle of wills between the government and trade union bosses. However, this argument is not about ministers or Labour chiefs but ordinary lorry drivers, who shepherd a potentially lethal load every day of their careers, so that our economy can keep going. They now face up to £9,000 being sliced off their salary and deteriorating safety standards that put all road users at risk.

These are the words of one, Tony, who has changed his name to avoid targetting by bosses.


My working day starts at two in the morning. For the next 12 hours, I am in charge of 38,000 litres of fuel. It is my job to load it, drive it to its place of distribution - which could be a forecourt anywhere in the country - and unload it, safe for purchase by the public. This will the be the first of between two and four runs I’ll make in one shift.

I’ve been doing this job for 18 years, and in that time I can only say things have never been worse. It is shocking to look back on how this business was once run and compare it with what happens today. Direct employment has ended, and standards have been stretched all the way down the supply chain. They’re at breaking point now.

The costs are still fixed – tankers, equipment, hoses – it is just that there are more businesses in the chain, all looking for their slice of the profit. And they come looking for it by cutting training, always pushing us to do more for less. We’re at that point now where we have to take a stand or see this industry deteriorate beyond repair. That is why we’re on the brink of the first ever nationwide fuel strike.

The government seems clueless about what is going on. The delivery of the fuel touches every part of our lives – our cars, buses, shops, businesses, schools, street lighting… you name it, it needs fuel. But the distribution of it is left entirely to the free market. It is crazy.

They say that we’re greedy but could they cope with £9,000 being loped off their wages overnight? Could they turn a blind eye to the safety abuses we see day in, day out?

 

 

Unlike water or gas, there is no regulator in fuel. The market rules. There is nothing requiring government to ensure supply is stable and safe. There are no minimum standards governing what the industry should do. This is why the industry is in danger of descending into chaos.

It is ripe for attack by cowboy operators, the small companies who hire and fire drivers, paying them £8-£9 per hour for a job they know ought to be paid £15 per hour.

The only way these low cost operators can turn a profit is to cut back on working conditions. Take training. A good contractor will provide 10-12 days’ training each year. These may be refresher courses for experienced drivers but on top of that, there will be two tests per year for competency; written tests, a driving assessment, and manual handling will be tested too. That’s the sort of training that gives reassurance to the public there is a professional behind the wheel.

It is certainly not a job that can be learned over night. Twenty years ago three months would be set aside to fully train a driver but industry fragmentation has pushed this down and down. Now we’ve got guys loading trucks not knowing what product is what. “Which one is unleaded?” I’ve been asked by someone about to take £50,000 worth of flammable liquid onto a public highway.

One time, a low cost driver even asked me how to unload the truck. He had only just been trained the day before, only just got his HGV licence - he had been driving buses previously.

And while the major contractors do have training standards, these only apply to their core workforce. When they use agency staff, these standards go out of the window. Take a recent dispute with one company. They brought in agency staff, with only two days’ training. Not surprisingly the drivers’ inexperience told and two loads were contaminated, one on a supermarket forecourt. The retailer was not happy – and neither were customers putting the wrong fuel in their tanks.

The contract for one household name retailer requires just one day’s training before a driver can take the tanker on the road. How can it be that you can enter the market without a fully trained workforce? It is unsafe and irresponsible – but it is what happens when there is nothing to stop training being cut to the bone.

Training has to be standardised. The message has to go out: unless you provide the minimum training you cannot operate in this business.

There’s been another very worrying development in recent years, the advent of the ‘self administration’ contract. That is where the driver is solely, 100 per cent responsible for every aspect of the care for the fuel - not just getting it on the road, but delivery, paperwork and IT. This let contractors sack office staff. Their jobs didn’t go – they were just heaped onto the drivers to do.

It was another ‘innovation’ the supermarkets brought when they became major players in the sector. Drivers are being told to do more, for less, and safety is compromised further.

Drivers are also increasingly told to deliver to a forecourt where they cannot expect to see a single other living being. These are places where there are only pumps – there isn’t even a shop attached; you’re on your own.

One national retailer has no forecourt personnel - they are unstaffed seven days a week, day and night. The tanker driver is left totally responsible for the fuel delivery and told to “watch the general public”. But we’re never allowed to leave the tanker unguarded either, even though we are on our own; it is a sackable offence. Yet, we’re told to challenge people if they’re smoking, or using a mobile phone, whatever the personal risk.

Colleagues have been attacked. One driver asked a guy to stop smoking near the petrol pumps and was assaulted for his troubles - he had to have two weeks off as a result.

The vehicles themselves are also worked to the bone; as a fellow driver said to me, “our trucks are like Meccano sets” because of the poor repairs. There are trucks in operation that are five years old with 800,000 kilometres on them and tyres that are threadbare. Breakdowns are happening on a daily basis. But we are constantly chased to move faster, deliver quicker.

When it snows or there is an accident, there are no allowances made to scheduling. The pressure to keep moving is phenomenal.

If something goes wrong, the companies are quick to blame you. A driver will be disciplined - as one was for walking to a safe distance from the tanker in order to make an urgent phone call. We’re as disposable as the commodity we deliver.

The disregard for public safety is astonishing. In years gone by, there were skilled people in the chain to sample the fuel, check for quality assurance, seal the vehicle and complete the paperwork. They’ve all gone. Drivers are even being told to park their tankers – full of fuel – on the public highway to save truckstop costs.

And what about respect for national checks? To deliver onto airports, we must be compliant with anti-terror rules, have been criminal record checked and so forth. Now we have low cost operators looking to dodge these checks to win a contract, or using agency workers with little training.

It seems the industry is prepared to put the public at risk for the sake of a pound.

Contracts are up for review continually, and each time, another little bit goes. It also means workers are completely at the mercy of the contract, not knowing if they will have a job from one year to the next.

Some of our colleagues – again on a supermarket contract – are now on six-month contracts. The delivery contract itself may be for three or five years, but the drivers are only safe for six months at a time. You try getting a mortgage or a rental agreement on that? It puts terrible strain on family life – you can’t plan anything when you don’t know if you can count on a pay cheque.

Contractors are also changing our place of work, often with only days’ notice. They’ll simply close one depot and move the fuel set up to a site some miles away, cutting wages while they go, telling the drivers to move, work for less or lose their job. It is a take it or leave it culture, totally heartless.

When you think of the money in this industry, it makes me so angry to see how the workers are treated. ‘Big oil’ and the retailers pretend it is nothing to do with them but they are the ones controlling the purse strings. If they weren’t so greedy they would allow the contractors a share of the profits, and workers could earn a stable living. We’re not asking for mega-wages, just to be able to work without fear, for ourselves, our families and the public.

Things will get worse, believe me, unless there is action now to stabilise this industry. The contractors of today will have their throats cut by the cowboys. Then what? It frightens me to think what will become of training, jobs and public safety then.

That is why we are now on the verge of a strike. We care about what we do. We want to see it done properly and safely. The fuel industry in this country is now at a crossroads. It has to take the right turn, and if need be we will take action to make it do so.

 


 

 

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So, what have we learned from the last few days?

The tanker drivers can cause chaos WITHOUT losing a day's pay!

The problem is this: there is NO spare capacity in the delivery system for fuels (if there were previously any spare capacity, then it has been long ago taken out by the constant pressure to reduce costs). The delivery system that we have now has been optimised around a certain throughput. If you increase demand artificially - eg by encouraging panic buying - this causes a "blip" in the system from which it takes many days to recover. Well done, politicians! How much economic activity have you been responsible for losing through queueing for fuel etc?

Now, since the rest of us are living on reduced means, how about showing REAL leadership and permanently reducing your inflated salaries by at least 20%? Oh, and by the way, no more non-EU "researchers" in the Palace of Westminster unless they are on recognised exchange programmes: are you REALLY trying to say that you can't find suitable candidates from within the EU?

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It was not the tanker drivers that caused anything. They said that they were unhappy and I would have been too. It was scare mongering MP's who are trying to put the blame on these drivers before they actually 'do' anything.

Yes, I agree, all politicans should have to use public transport, cheapest option or pay out of their own pockets. Their allowances cut. Maybe IF we kept them away from Parliament a bit, they would not do so much degas, because when they are there they seem to be full of too much nonsense, common sense having been lost many years ago.

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[quote user="idun"]

Payrise, no, it isn't about a payrise of £9000 a year, far from it. This driver sums it all up quite well.

 

http://www.leftfootforward.org/2012/03/fuel-strike-dispute-view-from-drivers-cab/

 

What it means is that currently these drivers are picking up approx £1800 month and those working for the small companies are picking up just over a £1000 a month, and as pensioners many may live on this, but young people with families will struggle.

 

I would be enraged if I ended up with the wrong fuel in my engine. It simply should not happen.

 

[/quote]

 

No it shouldn't happen - but occasinally it does - even with manned forecourts and with Unite drivers.  Oh and by the way, that seems to be the union blog site, so there are more than a few misleading items in the text - which I have deleted for brevity.

 

Small outfits simply do not get the contracts that are being discussed, because they cannot deliver the volumes.  Imagine Fred Bloggs haulage getting the Tescos contract.  It would be a bit like me supplying Super U with potatoes from my potager - good for the first delivery.

EDIT

BTW there is something wrong with your sums.  I reckon the average driver is getting around 3750 pounds per month gross. 45kpa

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[quote user="andyh4"]BTW there is something wrong with your sums.  I reckon the average driver is getting around 3750 pounds per month gross. 45kpa[/quote]

How do you get that, please?

If take-home is around £1800 per month, then the first £625 of that was tax-free and the rest was taxed at 20%, and there's 12% NI on everything above about £425/month. I get around £2380/Month gross = £28560 p.a.

I'm ignoring any employee pension contributions, but if they were at 10%, then we are still only at around £31.5K

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That is the point Pickles take home pay is not 1800 pounds per month - the average tanker driver of fuel deliveries is apparently getting 45kpa (source BBC website and backed up by an ex-driver who posted in another place that his final salary was 52k) - which by my sums is an average of around 3750 gross per month.

Do not believe the simplicity of the Unite webpage - there is a lot they do not tell you - for example about overtime, weekend and bank holiday working, condition money etc..

In fact there is a lot they don't tell you.

 

Did anyone else notice that while this dispute is supposed to be about safety, one of the many bones of contention was a driver who was reprimanded for leaving his tanker to make a phone call - which is a breach of safety regs.  So safety it seems is a pick and mix issue.

 

Much of the drivers story is full of such contradictions and part truths - which will easily mislead those not close to the industry.

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[quote user="andyh4"]

Much of the drivers story is full of such contradictions and part truths - which will easily mislead those not close to the industry.

[/quote]

Bit like people who cherry pick stories from an "ex driver" and the BBC, wow if the BBC says it's true then it must be.[:D]

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I calculated the pay on £15 per hour and an average 37 hour week,which is what everyone I know who does manual work does. That is basic pay. 15x37x52=£ 28660 listen to the tax man site, pick up £1820.93 after nat ins and tax, a site I use a lot. If these drivers work overtime they'll get more, or weekends etc. Isn't that normal for most workers, unsocial working hours means that people should get paid more. (And if they worked 42 hours a week, they'd pick up  just over £2k a month.)

I know which web site I saw it on. I would also say that there were less holes in that than the 'news' stories I have read recently which have been venemous and nasty, just my opinion ofcourse. I'm sure that there is normal ground somewhere inbetween, not that anyone will ever report that.

Incidentally £52k after nat ins and tax and someone picks up £3064.08 per month, gross pay £4333.

 

The figures I have used does not include any private/second pension payments, so people may well pick up less than that.

Can't smaller companies take on these contracts? I really cannot see why not. And neither does a friend of ours, his little haulage company did.

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[quote user="andyh4"]

Well as someone in the industry albeit not in the UK, I hope I know a little about the subject, if not the details of UK salaries.

 

Whereas your credentials would be.............?

[/quote]

Well you said it pal, and as I am not offering an opinion I don't need credentials. I just queried your sources of information. [:P]

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Back to the original dilemma, we noticed yesterday that there were signs advising no fuel available at several of the service areas on the road from Rennes to Caen. Fortunately we had filled up at the Mont St Michel services but after that according to the signs there was nothing for 90km.

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I doubt it RH.

 

No HGV driver in his right mind would not fill up in France if it meant he might have to fill up in the UK.  The difference in diesel price is the driver (pun intended) for that - 1.40€ versus 1.40 pounds.  That is of course without the impact of shortages in the UK.

 

I do not have a good explanation as to why supplies are tight excpet that with the coming holiday weekend and HGV traffic limitations, there will be a tight supply of delivery trucks for the next 10 days.  Why Normandy should be impacted? - maybe just happenstance.

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Frederick , sorry only just seen this , so not a lot of use now , but for next time

tesco will keep fuel back for emergency services and charity workers , meals on wheels ect all you have to do is go talk to your local manager and as long as he's in a good mood will allow you fill up , you will need proof of what you do

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 Thats good to know Pads .... Thanks for the information.. 

The problem now seems to be the growing cost of fuel .  I have noticed one garage  I used to fill up at on the A35 is now asking for £1.52,9p a ltr  diesel .... Our  local one in the village is now £1.48,9  . Talking to a fellow driver today he stated he was packing it in when he has to pay £1.50 for his diesel .I feel I shall have to do the same ...

Our milage rate was fixed for the term of the contract between the Ambulance Service and the Hospitals A five year contract we are now in the fourth year of with no sign of  increase set four years ago on the horizon .The Chief Ambulance Officer has made his  position clear an increase is presently unaffordable we are advised .

It will be interesting to see just how the  many  patients we transport will get to their appointments when we no longer "Volunteer " to take them in .

The trouble is in the rural villages we volunteers know just how difficult it will be for a lot of elderly ladies  living alone and who never  learned to drive to get to the Hospitals . My area includes the New Forest where public transport is very thin on the ground .I know many drivers will feel like me and will not want to let them down by stopping  what we do .    I am prepared like other drivers  to give my time for free....Subsidising the NHS from my pension when I fill my car up which is what will happen with the constant fuel price rises is what I will not do 

Decision time very soon I think  !

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