Welcome to the club Peter. I appreciate that you have changed your opinion as expressed at the ILWU International Dockers Solidaity Conference and that you and the IDC now support our initiative taken at our Dockers Section Meeting of 16 and 17 July to organise European Union wide actions against the Directive (a sort of EU legislation) as proposed by EU Transport Commissioner Loyola de Palacio. The decision was taken unanimously which indicates that we got the full support also from affiliates in other regions, like the ILWU.
I appreciate the friendly talks on national level in several countries (not all unfortunately) between ITF affiliates and non-affiliates. Only yesterday the Belgian so called liberal trade union, not affiliated to the ITF, decided to join the actions in Belgium and to cooperate with our affiliates BTB and ACV-Transcom.
The aim of the ITF is to get the opportunity once to agree on a EU legislation which is based on fair competition and not on completely free competition between ports and where appropriate inside ports. I’m sure IDC has the same objective. One way to get the opportunity is to introduce a so called Social Dialogue in the Port Industry. This does not exist in the EU Port Industry, while it does in other industries. The reason is that private employers don’t want it. In our opinion the EC and the EC administration in Brussels should refuse further dialogue with those private employers as long as they refuse to talk with trade unions.
As far as the preparations of the action day is concerned I will make available for the readers of this site my letter to affiliated unions, sent on the 13th of September 2001. This letter contains further details which might be interested for the readers. Finally we have issued short one page flyers in nearly all EU languages, which are available at the ITF (ports) website, where we have more information available. In the near future we will keep the readers informed on developments in relation to the action day and the follow up we have in mind.
Kees Marges
ITF Dockers’ Section Secretary
