Shipping companies, shippers and ports were yesterday warned that they should regularly check Internet sites used by trade unions to find out whether they could become the target of secondary strike action.
US lawyer Paul Heylmann of Schmeltzer, Aptaker & Shepard told more than 300 delegates [at the 6th International Symposium on Liner Shipping, held in Hamburg] that the unions had gone transnational, partly to circumvent national labour legislation banning secondary action.
"The volume of union rhetoric on the need to act transnationally has increased dramatically in the past couple of years," he said.
This reflected the fact that secondary action was outlawed in the US under the 1947 National Labour Relations Act.
Mr. Heylmann referred to the case of the International Longshoremen's Association, fighting non-unionised ports in Florida in 1990-91.
Association representatives had gone to Japan and met Japanese union counterparts, requesting help in their dispute with non-union companies.
As a result, the full citrus cargo to Japan was transferred to a unionised port.
The National Labour Relations Board banned the action following complaints.
However, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals did not accept the ban and the case was still in the courts.
"If the association's position is upheld, it [the ILA] will have the opportunity to expand its organising efforts and labour pressure against both non-union and union ports and stevedoring companies in the US," said Mr. Heylmann.
It could take "global action by invoking a local boycott against the customers of the stevedore and carriers doing business with the stevedore" anywhere in the world outside the US.
Mr. Heylmann said the dispute at the Mersey Dock and Harbour Company in the UK had similar overtones, with US and other unions boycotting carriers that called at Mersey Docks in Liverpool.
"It seems highly likely that labour's battles with management will be increasingly transnational," he said.
"It is the wise carrier and shipper who is prepared for this, whether as a neutral party or as an active participant."
He felt companies should review existing labour contracts to ascertain whether secondary and sympathy strikes were prohibited and, if so, the mechanisms which were available to enforce the prohibition.
They should also review agreements with other parties to determine what happened when there was a secondary or sympathy strike, and monitor disputes where they may be a target.
