Financial Times
Thursday September 4, 1997
By Christopher Parkes in Los Angeles and Robert Taylor In London
Ports on the US west coast and trading centers worldwide are threatened with disruption next week by action in support of Liverpool dockworkers involved in one of Britain's longest running industrial disputes.
The threat to facilities which handle half the US's seaborne trade emerged yesterday as union leaders in San Francisco called for meetings next Monday's evening shift-one of the busiest times of the week.
A spokesman for the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union said its planned stoppage was part of an "international day of action" co-ordinated from Liverpool to protest the "whole issue of casualizaton and privatization around the world".
Ports in Europe, Australia, Japan, India and South Africa would also be affected, it added.
The Pacific Maritime Association, which manages labour relations for all west coast ports, said Long Beach and Los Angeles-the region's biggest trading centres-had rejected an ILWU request for "stop-work" union meetings, scheduled for next Wednesday-norm ally a quiet night-to be held on Monday.
"It is one of the busiest nights of the week, with between 25 and 30 ships in the harbours," an official said.
The ILWU said disruption in the US would last from 6pm on Monday until 2am on Tuesday. The move coincided with a rejection by docker's leaders of a proposal to resolve the dispute which began in September 1995 when 327 men were dismissed for refusing to cross a picket line.
The creation of a labour cooperative, proposed in a feasibility study by KPMG, the management consultants, was rejected as "unacceptable and not the basis for an agreement" by Bobby Martin, senior dockers' shop steward.
The confidential consultancy report, commissioned by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company and the Transport and General Workers Union, suggested the co-operative could employ between 25 and 28 full-time stevedores to carry out dock work after two years. But dockers' leaders insist that all 327 men must have their jobs back.
The harbour company said it supported KPMG's plan, "subject to competitive
charges, working arrangements and productivity levels being offered".
The report said the co-operative's financial position would be "fragile,
even on the basis of an optimistic assumption about market penetration",
and warned it would "require adequate financial backing until a sustainable
break-even or profit position is reach".
