July 16, 1996
Liverpool longshoreman Terry Teague talked on a cellular phone yesterday while surrounded by Montreal dock workers.. (Photo: John Kenney)
Mike King and Katherine Wilton
The Gazette
Four fired longshoremen from Liverpool, England, crippled one-fifth of the Port of Montreal's container terminals for about four hours yesterday.
The disgruntled dockers scaled two giant cranes at the Cast terminal around 8 a.m., preventing the loading of a container ship destined for their home port across the Atlantic.
They men, age 39 to 51, are among 500 Liverpool longshoremen who lost their jobs 10 months ago for refusing to cross a picket line in support of 80 young dock workers fired by the Liverpool port authority during a labor dispute.
Yesterday's protest was part of an international campaign to prevent shipping companies from using the port until the workers are reinstated.
"We have been protesting in 21 countries over the past 10 months and we will continue to do so until we get our jobs back and our families are looked after," said Terry Southers, 51, one of the four dockers.
The workers said Cast, a Montreal-based shipping line, is the largest company using the Liverpool docks and its containers are being handled by non-unionized workers hired after the longshoremen were sacked.
"If we have to follow Cast around the world to make our point, we will do that," Southers said. "By using scab workers, they don't have to pay pension benefits or holiday pay."
The workers want Cast to unload its cargo at another British port until the labor dispute is settled. They claim that New York-based Atlantic Container Line stopped using the Mersey Docks last month following protests at their offices around the world.
While perched atop the cranes yesterday, the men dropped bilingual pamphlets explaining their plea for help. They accused Cast of being "determined to support scab labor and the strikebreaking tactics of Mersey Docks."
The workers spoke yesterday with Cast vice-president Kevin Doherty. Doherty told them he would pass on their concerns to the company's president. Cast officials refused to comment about the morning shutdown.
"We have been trying to meet with Cast officials for several months and we had to come to their home to speak with them," said Southers, who protested along with Tony Nelson, 39, Terry Teague, 46, and Kevin Robinson, 49.
Robinson said he and his fellow longshoremen would never have crossed the picket line of the 80 younger dockers, who they say were unjustly fired.
"Those boys are the sons and brothers of the older dockers," he said. "They need our support."
The four men ended their protest shortly before noon with the intervention of Michel Murray, president of the Montreal dockworkers' union.
They were escorted from the bottom of the 45-metre-high cranes to the Cast terminal office by a throng of about 75 local dock workers.
It was Murray who drove them to the office at Cite du Havre with an escort of both Port of Montreal and Montreal Urban Community police cruisers.
Despite the disruption, however, the four escaped criminal charges and were set free after questioning by Ports police and Immigration Canada investigators.
The men said they ended their demonstration on condition they wouldn't be arrested. Port spokesman Michel Turgeon suggested that the container company probably agreed to the demand as long as the protesters left quietly.
The men said they will return to England tomorrow.
Turgeon said it was difficult to determine how much the work stoppage cost Cast.
While the British stevedores had the support of their unionized brethren in Montreal, their actions angered local truckers waiting to unload at the Cast docks.
"We have enough problems of our own without having to worry about what's happening over there (England),'' irate independent trucker Jacques Gagne said, waiting next to his rig. "I've lost about $250 this morning."
Fellow trucker Daniel Fournier lamented: "It doesn't pay to sit around for hours. I had 10 loads to pick up during the three hours I've been stuck here."
