Work-stop meetings and strikes are scheduled in most of the European ports for Tuesday afternoon on the 25th September in a massive protest against the European Commissions proposals for a directive on market access to port services. The Commissions “Transport Guru”, Dr Wolfgang Elsner, despite personal letters to union leaders, has failed to convince dockers that the draft with which he presented Parliament earlier this year is not anti union primarily designed to do away with organised workforces. Dockers unions affiliated to both the IDC and the ITF are convinced that Elsner’s DG- TREN (the Commission group responsible for transport and energy issues) has been too much influenced by European shipping and shippers organisations and strayed too far from Parliament’s original intentions.
The actions are not a union declaration of “war on the waterfront”, the proposals clumsy attempts to dismantle port organisations reckoned to be the most efficient in the world are not all that popular with some of the employers either and a political solution is therefore still possible. The Spanish dockworkers union’s (Coordinadora Estal De Trabajadores Del Mar) lawyers and others are doing an excellent job in exposing the legal contradictions in the draft text so the actions next week are aimed at waking public awareness as to what might happen to the port industry if the Elsner’s ideology prevails.
Fraternally.
Peter Shaw
Swedish Dockworkers Union
