Pressure builds for coal hauliers
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INTENSE PRESSURE on Scottish haulier Yuill and Dodds was increased on Tuesday this week when it was left as the only haulier supplying coal to the threatened Ravenscraig steel works.
W. H. Malcolm of Brookfield and Bernard Brogan of Wishaw, the two other hauliers maintaining the works' fuel supplies last week, stopped deliveries.
Drivers at the Shell/BP terminal at Bishopbriggs, north of Glasgow, decided to end de liveries of diesel to Strathavenbased Yuill and Dodds after miners picketed the haulier, according to Trensport and General Workers' Union regional organiser Bill Queen.
The drivers' position is in line with advice from the TGWU haulage group's Glasgow and Paisley branches, although the group has not discussed the miners' strike at regional level, he said.
Yuill and Dodds would not comment on whether it would continue to supply Ravenscraig when contacted by CM on Tuesday, although a spokesman did say that he saw no reason why the withdrawal of the other two hauliers should affect his firm's decision.
Many diesel suppliers were offering to deliver diesel, he added.
Yuill and Dodds drivers all said they would take coal into Ravenscraig, after being offered the option of not doing the work. They all felt the same way, a spokesman said.
• Ravenscraig, one of the British Steel Corporation's five main mills, is the focal point of the coal strike in Scotland. Drivers delivering coal have been given police escorts from Hunterston terminal in Ayrshire to the plant, and face having to drive through the works entrance at high speed while crowds of pickets
are being held back by police. While opposed by the National Union of Mineworkers in Scotland, the deliveries are welcomed by steel unions as essential to keep the Ravens' craig furnaces serviceable.
The tippers were supplementing a train-load of coal each day, and were needed to bring Ravenscraig up to a "minimum operational safety level," a BSC spokesman said.
Picketing at Ravenscraig was quiet on Tuesday, with the main effort evidently switched to Hunterston. The works difficulties were increased with the rail unions' decision to withdraw the single train-load each day.