The European Shippers’ Council (ESC), which represents European shipping companies, has moved its Brussels office to the Park Leopold Building, next door to the European Parliament (EP).
The sole reason for this is to be able to lobby (work on) European Members of Parliament to influence their judgement on important issues, especially the proposals for a directive on market access to port services.
Chris Welsh, ESC’s secretary general, said in an article in SchedNet (http://www.schednet.com): “Recent changes within the decision-making structure of the EU mean that the Parliament is more powerful than it has ever been. At the same time, the EP will be discussing some major issues in the near future - the Access to Port Services Directive, transport corridors, and the Common Transport Policy. All of these require a strong shipper voice, that is why we have moved here.”
ECS, together with CLEAT (who represent European forwarding companies) are the employers associations most blatantly anti-union. They support nearly whole-heartedly the EU-Commissions proposals (they thought they fell a bit short!) to open up the European ports for more competition and for the right for employers to self handle and employ the workforce of their choosing.
In their comments to the Social and Economic Committee they state that they are pleased to note that the Commission has taken into account their basic principles - “ open markets, free and fair competition between and within ports, no imposed services, fair and transparent pricing and the abolition of outmoded labour practices” - A channel 6 interpretation of “outmoded labour practices” is: a few well-paid loyal specialists and lots of casuals - all non union of course!
At the moment they’re engaged in the ongoing campaign to discredit the EU-Parliament’s Rapporteur, Georg Jarzembowski who has presented a scathing criticism of the Commissions work and proposed some very basic changes in the thrust of the directive - changes which would especially suit municipal port owners and even be reasonably acceptable to the unions. Let’s hope that all of us in the European dockers unions are forewarned and forearmed because we’ve got some powerful opposition and a tough time ahead. If we can’t reach a political compromise then we’ll really have to make a “no holds barred” fight of it
Fraternally,
Peter Shaw - Swedish Dockworkers Union
