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Post by dazbt on Dec 27, 2011 3:07:12 GMT -5
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Post by dazbt on Mar 14, 2012 5:09:07 GMT -5
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Post by Ragger on Mar 14, 2012 7:52:24 GMT -5
Hi. Daz, My nephew works at Daw Mill, it's a worrying time. Some of the young lads I worked with also work at Daw Mill now. It seems things never change. |
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Post by John on Mar 14, 2012 8:09:00 GMT -5
With coal prices being so high, how come Daw Mill is closing??
Isn't this the pit with the very thick seam of high quality steam raising coal?
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Post by Ragger on Mar 14, 2012 11:44:48 GMT -5
With coal prices being so high, how come Daw Mill is closing??
Isn't this the pit with the very thick seam of high quality steam raising coal? The pit has "considerable long-term resources", production is 175,000 tonnes behind budget. The Guardian report below. The move comes just three months after the company reached a deal with the UDM and the National Union of Mineworkers which included a two-year pay freeze and a new shift system. Together with the closure of its final-salary pension scheme for the 3,000-strong workforce, the deal agreed in December was expected to keep labour costs per head at 2010-levels to the end of 2013. A new, less favourable final-salary pension scheme started at the beginning of the year. UK Coal, which bought British Coal's main mining assets after the privatisation of the state mining company in 1994, blamed "limited unofficial action" by miners at the Warwickshire colliery, along with geological flaws, for a major production shortfall. The pit has been dogged by productivity problems in recent years, including a four-month gap in production which cost it £75m two years ago. The company said: "It has reached a critical point. The company can't afford to keep running Daw Mill as it is. "The mine is at risk but the company will not be put at risk by a single pit … This company is not in good shape. We are ringfencing each mine and Daw Mill has been the poorest performer." UK Coal said the miners at Daw Mill were being asked to work the same shift patterns to which workers at the firm's other deep mines, Thoresby in Nottinghamshire and Knottingley in Yorkshire, had already agreed. Jeffrey Wood, the UDM's president, struck a conciliatory note and said he hoped miners could work through the geological disturbance on a new coal face – dirt and loose mud which is forcing them to build a timber structure to make the pit safe – within the next month. He acknowledged that the mine was only producing 20,000 tonnes of coal a week, half the company's target, but believed the target was "achievable" once the geological problem had been sorted out. "We have to put aside any differences we may have, it's no good blaming each other," he said. "The only way is for everyone to pull together. There is light at the end of the tunnel." The coal seam at Daw Mill is five metres thick, some 750 metres below the ground, and UK Coal says on its website that it could continue to produce resources until 2028. Daw Mill is the only remaining pit in a region that used to have dozens of deep mines, employing thousands of miners. |
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