Dockers unanimously reject offer.

In a stormy two and a half hour meeting 400 dockers today rejected the joint pleas of T&GWU officials and church leaders and unanimously threw out a "final offer" from the Mersey Docks & Harbour Company. This came after the company was forced to negotiate with the T&GWU, the dockers' union, by international support action by dockers throughout the world. In the offer, MD&HC agreed to re-employ 40 of the 500 sacked men and pay 20-25,000 pounds each as severance pay to the rest.

In a separate deal for the 80 former Torside employees, whose sacking provoked the original dispute, one third would be re-employed by a re-formed Torside company and the rest given 1,000 pounds each.

The offer will now go to a secret ballot, but Mersey Port Shop Stewards, who called for the rejection, are predicting that the result of the ballot will be the same as the mass meeting. Speaker after speaker from the dockers rejected the deal, reminding each other that they had not fought for money, but for solidarity and secure jobs for themselves and their children. The overall feeling was summarized by Doreen McNally, who chairs the support group, Women of the Waterfront: "The whole world's eyes are on these men. Every working man and woman in this country is affected, because they all face short term contracts and loss of rights. The dockers' wives are one hundred per cent behind their husbands in continuing this fight for jobs and rights."

Jimmy Nolan, Chairman of the Port Shop Stewards Committee said, "The only way for the dock company to resolve this dispute is by re-instating all the sacked dockers".

MD&HC acknowledged that the offer would cost 7-8 million pounds, but admitted that the international support for the Liverpool men had itself so far cost them 4 million pounds plus an additional loss by Euro-link of 3.3 million pounds.

In a clear indication of the company fears provoked by the threat of withdrawal from the port by ACL, the largest user, following solidarity action by US east coast longshoremen, the whole deal was made conditional on ACL continuing to use the port.

The dockers are now planning to revisit all the ports throughout the world that have supported them so magnificently and ask for their continued support. They are angry at what they see as an attempt to undermine this action by the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), who issued a statement saying:

"Not withstanding the mood of many of our affiliates, we wish to stress the need for an effective co-ordination in order to prevent any damage to the case of the Liverpool dockers. Effective co-ordination requires the ITF's affiliates to wait for a request from the ITF before supportive actions are organised. Do not start any action against any vessel known to be loading or discharging cargoes to and from the port of Liverpool without contacting the ITF secretariat!"

The dockers believe this statement does not correspond with the mood for stepping up support action expressed by the majority of the more than 100 international delegates that attended an ITF meeting in London last week.