Its just stupid that people are panic buying. I put some petrol in on thursday and only put in my usual £20. Now i know that come monday the pumps may be dry because of people filling up with more than they normally do. If people didnt panic buy then come monday there would still be plenty of petrol to be had.
Gah, if its not fuel blockades its tanker strikes!
- Thread starter mejinks
- Start date
Soldato
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people are so goofy 
I swear they do it so they have something interesting to tell their mates because they live such boring mundane lives.
I swear they do it so they have something interesting to tell their mates because they live such boring mundane lives.
Soldato
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As a general rule fuel is supplied by the local refinery, which if you're in Warrington will be the Shell refinery at Stanlow in Cheshire where the drivers are picketing.
I've not noticed any queues around here, well no more than usual because there is always a queue at the local Shell because it's the cheapest around.
yeah but there bosses got like 15-25% increase and they "only" got 6%....
but still. 37k for driving a lorry (no offence to resident lorry drivers).
next they will be moaning about all the immigrants stealing there jobs
Soldato
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The headline figures printed in the media include a substantial amount of overtime and are not the basic salary for a 37 hour week.
As for it being an unskilled job, well I wouldn't like to jump in a tanker and give it a go! You don't want any old idiot driving around with 20,000L+ of petrol sloshing around behind them. Tanker drivers have to undergo extra training above normal HGV drivers, plus hazardous substances training. The consequences of an accident, both to public safety and environmental are huge. Fuel tanker drivers should, quite rightly, be the best in their profession and to attract the best you have to pay good money.
I don't believe in striking over pay myself, but these guys haven't had a pay rise in 15 years. I would question what their union has been doing during that time but I can understand why they are striking.
These drivers are not employed by Shell, they are employed by 2 haulage firms who have contracts with Shell. The argument about oil company profits is irrelevant. That's like Eddie Stobart drivers going on strike because Tesco execs got large bonuses. I suspect the issue is that for the 2 companies involved is the Shell contract makes up so much of their business that to lose it would kill them financially over night and as such they have gone in with a low bid to retain the contract which does not leave enough room to increase the drivers pay and still turn a profit. It is not for Shell to bail out it's contractors becuase they are not operating their businesses effectively.
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Not just you mate, I found out what they were actually on and couldn't believe it!
'Only' 32K? Wow, my heart bleeds.
Soldato
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Perhaps this situation has been engineered by the haulage companies.
Get "OMG earn £32k as a tanker driver*" splashed all over the papers and then every man and his dog will want to do it and the excess supply of drivers will force the wages down.
Hmmmm.
Get "OMG earn £32k as a tanker driver*" splashed all over the papers and then every man and his dog will want to do it and the excess supply of drivers will force the wages down.
Hmmmm.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf0n...ilingworld.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=74239
He must have missed his training
While I do agree that workers should get a raise to match inflation every year, which these drivers have not had, I don't think that people who provide essential services should be allowed to strike. If they continue to strike then they're going to cause big problems, especially when they're blockading the refineries. This is 2008, the 70's ended a long time ago.
Does fuel delivery count as an essential service?
And it's not like they've disrupted every station, it's the panic buying that is screwing up supplies.
32k-37k a year for a driver working 7 days a week in the region of 70 hours a week is really not great pay.
Especialy with the current mortgage situation I am pretty lucky working as a mechanical engineer at a powerstation and earn 50k per year, yet i can still only really just afford to buy a 2 bed house. (although it is silly if i was to do such at this current time)
ADR driver pay is not that great at around £10-12 an hour, so for them to earn the stated salerys they must be putting in silly hours, basically having no social or family life.
It's all relative i guess the cost of living needs to come down rather than wages going up, but how hard is that to achieve?
Regards
Andy
Especialy with the current mortgage situation I am pretty lucky working as a mechanical engineer at a powerstation and earn 50k per year, yet i can still only really just afford to buy a 2 bed house. (although it is silly if i was to do such at this current time)
ADR driver pay is not that great at around £10-12 an hour, so for them to earn the stated salerys they must be putting in silly hours, basically having no social or family life.
It's all relative i guess the cost of living needs to come down rather than wages going up, but how hard is that to achieve?
Regards
Andy
The cost of goods and services is relatively cheap, it's having over half your wage wiped out in mortgage payments that isn't sustainable. Excessive government tax never helps anybody, but we have Labour in so it keeps half the public sector in a 'job'.
I fully support these guys, they have effetely taken a pay cut for the last 15 years for doing a job that I wouldn't do, and probably wouldn't be good enough for. They were given the money for a reason, not because they had pictures of the deciding members in compromising positions. Fuel strikes seem to be the only thing that makes the country wake up and listen.
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Well seeing as fuel is needed for pretty much every aspect of modern life I'd say it was.
Working in simple jobs like stocking shelfs at B&Q or checkers etc over here is about £8.50 an hr (£17,680)
Lorry drivers were i live get around £11.50 an hour (not including overtime rates)...(But we don't have any 40T fuel tanker lorrys here
)
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well thats your choice i can guarentee someone working for me just as a cleaner sweeping up in a powerstation £400 a week if you will put the hours in (around 7.50 an hour +overtime first 4 hours 1/5x anything after that in a week period is 2x),
plenty of jobs in industry to earn money.
if you choose to work in a comercial shop/factory thats your choice.
Like it or not but driving a tanker full of fuel does require a skill. thus should be paid as a skilled job.
Regards
Andy
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