Financial support will be subject to the control of the Executive, but the other two commitments were approved by Congress without reference to the Exec.
The resolution was proposed by Jurgen Soencksen, group works committee chairman at Hapag-Lloyd and a seaman for 31 years.
The text reads:
"The ÖTV union supports the Liverpool Dock workers, who find themselves on strike for over a year, by:
The ÖTV in this way acts in accordance with the appeal of the ITF General Secretary David Cockcroft, on 10.9.96, to all ITF affiliated unions.
Motivation:
The root of the conflict is the intention of the Port employer and the British Government, to make the last British port "union-free". The Liverpool Dockers must, like all remaining British dockers after the forlorn 1989 dispute, become employed on daily hire terms. This extreme example of anti-union deregulation policy of the Thatcher government has also become a model to be examined by companies and Governments of other EU states. So for example the privatisation and the sale of the port of Rostock to a British investment group and the further withdrawal of ports such as Lubeck, Wismar, Nordenham, Brake, Elsfleth from the Central Association of Harbour- operations ring alarm bells throughout Germany.
The ÖTV union along with dockers and seafarers must strengthen the international resistance against this policy which threatens our existence. The support for the Liverpool Dockers strike against deregulation is therefore, alongside our commitment to solidarity, a necessary contribution in our own interest as well."
In proposing the motion, Jurgen Soencksen declared:
"Colleagues! I am the group works committee chairman at Hapag- Lloyd and have been a seaman for 31 years. I have two reasons for wanting to speak on this resolution. The first is more emotional, the other has, I think, a trade union-political importance even if it is apparently only about five hundred striking dockers in Liverpool.Naturally for a seaman, a name like Liverpool awakens associations to Bombay, Hongkong and San Francisco. But this is not the real motive. Furthermore for a year and a half I was also a radio operator in my job on a container ship, my shipping company was in Liverpool. When one sees this industrial sector, when one sees a Port in which ten thousand dockers had their jobs, where presently only about five hundred men are employed, then something becomes clear; with some despair, but also with some courage dockers here carry out resistance against an inhuman deregulation policy.
Therefore this does not only concern the dismissal of all the dockers. It is not only therefore that through their dismissal they lose all income and pension claims. But above all it is that they therefore fight, not to return to the working conditions of the 1900's, namely the daily-hire.
Since 1989 the Thatcherite deregulation policy has led to exactly this system again becoming introduced in all English ports. The only ones so far to have fought against it successfully, were the five hundred dockers of Liverpool.
In 1986 for the first time after ninety years we have carried out a seamen's strike again. I informed the Conference about it then.
The ÖTV had in 1986 appealed to the English dockers for support. We received this solidarity entirely as a matter of course and without any precondition, and in return I am today still grateful; it has made a very strong impression on me. I say: we and the ÖTV stand in the debt of the English dockers.
The support is also therefore very important just now, since after one year - one must once reflect: after a year, because of the new legislation in England the English trade union is not allowed to carry out material support - nevertheless a result is in sight, since the dockers world-wide hold up ships, boycott, slow down, so as to exert pressure on Mersey Docks & Harbour, the employer, in which the British Government holds 13% of the shares as well.
In this situation not only our moral support is required, but also total practical support in reality. Naturally this struggle cannot continue forever - we know - an end is in sight.
To the recommendation of the commission: as correct as it is in principle, it is in this specific case just as wrong. I can certainly live with the recommendation of the Resolutions Commission, when the seafarers, when money is also actually flowing to the dockers. I think, Herbert Mai should himself now comment on that, whether the statutes give the possibility to realise these promises in reality as well.
Colleagues, just as a demonstration, as we are a threat to Daimler, I ask for a demonstrative resolution, for the ITF has called upon us and the ITF as well as the other transport workers unions are watching this Congress and also this Resolution. Therefore I ask the 384 colleagues that have supported the Resolution and all others by whom it was not accepted, for the agreement to this Resolution. I thank you."
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