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Blockade threat looms
Page 7
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OIL TANKER DRIVERS are threatening to bring the country to a standstill after a campaign to improve their pay and conditions failed to secure a key objective.
As CM went to press about 50 Transport & General Workers Union delegates from the oil industry were meeting to discuss the lack of a national forum to discuss their grievances.
The campaign kicked off a year ago with a warning that refineries could be blockaded unless key stakeholders and industry leaders agreed to talk. Ron Webb, the T&G's national secretary for road transport, believes the delegates' patience has finally run out:"Oil companies are probably not taking seriously enough the agenda we have put forward and the contractors are sitting on the fence.
"I can tell you that the tanker drivers won't wait another year in going forward with this campaign."
Webb refuses to say what type of action might be taken to put pressure on the industry and government to set up the forum.
But when the campaign was launched on behalf of about 3,000 tanker drivers in October 2003, the outgoing T&G general secretary Sir Bill Morris made it clear that the threat of blockades was real.
He said: "Every aspect of life we take for granted requires a secure, safe supply of oil. No-one wants to see a repeat of the fuel blockades, so both industry and government have a responsibility to work with us to address concerns and avoid another stranglehold on the nation's oil supplies." (CM 16 October 2003)