On the eve of this weekend's reconvened international dockers conference, the weekly mass meeting in Liverpool was bound to be something special. Delegates from Australia, Canada, America, Denmark, and Sweden were on the platform and the cameras were rolling for a BBC documentary directed by Ken Loach. With Mersey Docks declaring a 17% fall in profits last week, the International Transportworkers Federation meeting in London next week and the TUC Congress on 9 September, you might think the time was ripe to beat the 11 month old lockout with escalating industrial action. Everyone in the room today would agree.
But the key report back on yesterday's 4 hour meeting between dock shop stewards and their union leadership made it plain that T&GWU officials are seeking a settlement short of full reinstatement, and that the ITF leadership is deeply hostile to the style of independent international rank and file direct contacts pursued by the Liverpool dockers.
The stewards had originally sought a meeting with the union's Finance and General Purposes committee earlier this month. That request was declined and the F&GP went on to call for negotiations "without preconditions", a call repeated in a letter from T&GWU Gen. Sec. Bill Morris to Mersey Docks, which cited the return of transatlantic shipping line ACL to Liverpool after a 4 week absence as a reason for the talks.
Yesterday 9 stewards met with Bill Morris, his deputy Jack Adams who has lead the negotiating team, and Docks National Officer John Connolly. It was mutually agreed that a frank exchange of views was now essential.
The first concern raised by Jimmy Nolan was the intervention of the ITF. A number of European ports have pulled out of this weekend's conference in Liverpool at the last minute after receiving faxes from ITF General Secretary David Cockcroft. Apparently Cockcroft is upset that direct links, international picketing, occupations of gantry cranes in Montreal etc. are taking place without his advance knowledge. The stewards are in possession of a fax alerting them to a claim by the ITF that the T&GWU will now move to end the dispute.
A second concern is the repeated delays in payments from the T&GWU Hardship Fund, with the union leadership denying that anyone is starving in Liverpool.
The stewards' request to address the forthcoming TUC Congress remains in limbo, with the T&GWU proposing that Jack Adams speak on their behalf.
But the key issue is the aim of forthcoming negotiations with the company. For the dockers the talks must seek the reinstatement of all men sacked in the dispute, including Torside and various smaller groups, with the reinstated men taking up their jobs as dockers rather than redeployment into ancillary areas. Those who wish to leave the industry must then be offered voluntary severance. But for Bill Morris, negotiations cannot go beyond the 329 men directly employed by MDHC last September, and ancillary jobs must be acceptable as a form of re-employment. Coincidentally, this is also MDHC's position on the framework for talks.
For years, Mersey Docks has been happier to deal with the union than with the Liverpool stewards. The problem for the company is that the international blockade has been organised by the rank and file, and has done enough damage to convince shipping lines around the world that Liverpool is a 'strike-bound port'.
The union, feeling constrained by the legislation brought in over a decade of Thatcherism, has played a cautious hand, hardly publicising the lockout. Dockers reported today that a A3500 donation from Fords Southampton plant had been very welcome but they were stunned to learn the Fords men thought the dispute was "over".
But for the sacked men and the international delegates arriving for the weekend, it is not over and it can't be over until they win. Michel Murray was explicit: your actions have given us the opportunity to awaken our own membership in Montreal, and without your victory no-one will win around the world.
It looks like a full weekend.
LabourNet Report
