Source
Automatically imported from: http://commons.somewhere.com:80/rre/1996/International.dockers.24.html
Content
| | | | --- | --- | | Red Rock Eater Digest | Most Recent Article: Fri, 4 May 2001 |
International dockers 24 hr strike called
``` [This is a good example of international coordination of labor activity, which computer networking is rapidly making both necessary and possible.]
---
This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to rre-help@weber.ucsd.edu
---
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 01:50:27 +0000
From: LabourNet
International dockers 24 hr strike called
A worldwide storm is set to break over the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company in just six weeks, with a 24-hour international shut-down of the docks industry now planned for 20 January.
The action will be both a coordinated show of solidarity with locked-out Liverpool dockers and their families, an attack on shipping lines which allow scabs to service their vessels or handle their containers, and a demonstration that dockers throughout the world are taking up the fight against casual labour, deregulation, and privatisation.
At least fifteen different dockers' unions and the International Transport Workers' Federation are stating support for the plan. The International Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Union on the North American West Coast have taken a lead; last week their International Executive Board moved a 24-hour blockade in all ILWU-organised ports and this decision reflects the huge groundswell within ILWU locals.
Liverpool dockers are also welcoming the new ITF position, which calls on "affiliated organisations to undertake all possible legal trade union strategies to put pressure on the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company and on shipping firms carrying cargoes that have been loaded by strike-breakers in Liverpool".
These words will be tested in the North European ports of Antwerp, Rotterdam, Bremerhaven and Hamburg, which hold the key to trans-atlantic shipping lines ACL, CAST and CanMar, connecting North America with Liverpool and Europe. While Swedish dockers have hit ACL for twelve hours every week since the summer, Danish dockers struck in solidarity with Liverpool in October, Le Havre held up an OOCL vessel for sixteen hours and hosted the recent international dockers' meeting, and the German OTV union Congress resolved to put industrial pressure on Mersey Docks and shipping lines calling at Liverpool, attempts to engage the Belgian and Dutch ports in solidarity action have yet to bear fruit.
When ACL pulled out from Liverpool for four weeks last summer, Mersey Docks was in a panic. Now, despite their poor share price and increasingly bad press, the company continues to put on a brave face. If ACL, CAST, CanMar, ZIM, Andrew Weir, or Gracechurch were to pull out now, MDHC would be back behind the eight ball. But that can only happen when shipping lines discover they are all in trouble half way round the world after calling in a scab port.
Fifteen months into the lock-out, Mersey Docks thought Liverpool dockers and their families were looking for any way out and would grab the latest offer of 41 ancillary jobs and UKp25,000 severance in the run-up to Christmas. But in fact, as one rank and file docker put it last week, "I find I'm getting stronger and more determined to win this, to make sure that we go back. I will admit that I do get disillusioned at times, especially when I go down the picket line and see three ships there. I say to myself, 'is this working, this international set up?' And I think everybody must ask themselves that question.
But when you go round the country and see the commitment that people have for you, you owe it to them as well to win a victory, not only for ourselves but for other trade unionists. In Sweden, the dockers took me down and showed me the ACL coming in, took a note of the time, and took me back the next day and said, 'there is the ACL line there, no work being carried out and it won't start until twelve hours after it docked'.
So I have seen it in operation, and I think it is tremendous that anybody can give that support to somebody in another country, and I only hope that we will be able to return the favour to those people that supported us.
I want to see the scabs out of the port, and I want to see the men back that want to go back, and I want to see the union back in there calling the shots, and let's have decent conditions. That's what I want to see in the port of Liverpool."
Please fax messages of support and pledges of industrial action to
(+44) 151-207 0696 and copy them by email to LabourNet
LabourNet report by Greg Dropkin
Full coverage of Mersey docks dispute including article by John Pilger is on the LabourNet web site http://www.labournet.org.uk ```
| | | --- | | ProcessTree Network TM For-pay Internet distributed processing. | | Advertising helps support hosting Red Rock Eater Digest @ The Commons. Advertisers are not associated with the list owner. If you have any comments about the advertising, please direct them to the Webmaster @ The Commons. |