Striking casual dock workers have attacked their colleagues and prevented them from reporting for duty as a strike at Durban Harbour enters its second day on Tuesday.
On Monday armed police escorted more than 600 casual dock labourers out of the port in Durban after thousands of workers went on strike, injuring six workers in the process.
Striking workers in groups of about a hundred are targeting people looking for casual work and preventing them from entering the harbour area. A number of ships are sitting in the harbour waiting to be loaded or off loaded.
The protest and intimidation is costing thousands of rands and was seriously denting the port’s reputation, Rob Gardener, chair of the Association of Shipping Agents, said on Tuesday.
Gardener said it cost ships about R70 000 a day to dock in the harbour and with at least 10 ships affected at Maydon Wharf the amount lost was very high.
There were also reports of violence and intimidation early on Tuesday. At a labour brokerage, the Work Force Group, there are usually between 300 and 400 men looking for casual labour. This morning the premises were empty as casual labourers were threatened and prevented from looking for work.
More than 1 000 casual labourers, members of the South African Allied Employees Union and Service Employees Industrial Union went on strike on Monday in the port, attacking dozens of other workers who refused to join the action.
The dock labourers are demanding the disbanding of the National Dock Labour Scheme (NDLS) which began employing casual labour in the harbour three years ago.
The NDLS was stopped in March when several port companies pulled out of the scheme.
Strike leader Willie Cirah said: “We want the immediate reformation of the NDLS, which has to undergo a restructuring process.
“We also want all independent labour brokering companies to be excluded from the NDLS,” said Cirah. This was because the brokers could not guarantee job security, he said.
He said it was impossible to live on the wages which they were being paid.
“We tried to negotiate with the brokers, but they refused, saying that if we were unhappy with our wages we could leave because there were thousands of other people who wanted jobs,” he said.
Cirah said the strike would go on indefinitely.
“We will see to it that this port is closed and that nothing is loaded onto or taken off any ship which comes into Durban harbour,” he said.
Helen Maclennan, regional human resources manager for Strikeforce, one of the labour broker companies which employs casual labourers in the port, refused to comment. Representatives of several companies that are members of the Stevedores Association and based in the port, said the strike would have a crippling effect on business.
“If this strike action continues for much longer we are going to be losing millions of rands in business. Something has to be done now before it is too late,” said a business owner. Other companies expressed anger at the strike, saying it took place every year.
“The casual workers strike every year and never get anywhere. I do not understand why they continue to do it if they know that they are not going to be successful,” said Robert Murries, a representative of one of the affected companies. Mbali Khuzwayo of Portnet said the parastatal was holding meetings to discuss what steps were to be taken to minimise the effects of the strike.
