What began as a speck on the horizon now looks like Typhoon "Liverpool" as unions spanning the Pacific and Atlantic trade routes prepare for world-wide industrial action against privatisation, casualisation, and the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company beginning on 20 January.
Ports and unions in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the US West Coast, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Holland, Cyprus, Germany are in motion, and news is expected from France, Belgium, Portugal, and the US East Coast.
The tide was already running strong when, on 10 January the dockers weekly mass meeting received a fax from the International Transportworkers Federation. Gen Sec David Cockroft and Dockers' Section Sec Kees Marges had just written
"requesting all ITF dockworkers affiliates:
- To take whatever steps are open to you, including public demonstrations and, if possible, direct action aimed at ships currently using the port facilities in Liverpool affected by the dispute during the week commencing 20 January;
- To send further messages to the management and to the shop stewards indicating that the action is taken in support of the successful conclusion of the negotiating process already under way."
The day before the ITF move, the TGWU Finance & General Purposes Committee (F&GP) decided not to impose the secret ballot demanded by Mersey Docks as a condition of their "ultimate offer". The ballot was widely canvassed in the media by TGWU Gen Sec Bill Morris and Peter Kilfoyle, the Labour MP for Bootle (adjoining the north docks area), ever since the offer officially expired on New Year's Eve. And without reference to Liverpool the "Financial Times" reported (7 Jan) that the Labour leadership, despite dissension within the Shadow Cabinet, favours compulsory reballoting in long-running industrial disputes.
But in the event the F&GP evidently accepted that it would not be in the union's best interest to force a secret ballot at this point, given its overwhelming rejection by the dockers themselves.
Whatever manoeuvres lie ahead for the TGWU and ITF, the storm and its far-reaching consequences cannot now be averted. As of 10 January, the stewards had received firm commitments from:
A number of other unions will meet next week to discuss possible action around 20 Jan:
Beyond this ever growing list of unions known to be contemplating action, the Liverpool stewards are hopeful of support from the CGT in Le Havre in the wake of their previous solidarity. They have also written to Bob Baete, Nat. Sec. of the BTB Port Section, requesting industrial action against ACL in Antwerp and CAST in Zeebrugge in the week of 20 Jan.
Finally, the stewards ask that ILA longshoremen on the US East Coast might choose 20 January, celebrated as Martin Luther King's birthday, as a fitting moment to join dockers around the world in their common fight against injustice.
Greg Dropkin
