European Dockworkers meet in Belfast The IDC European Zone organised a meeting in Belfast last week with dockworkers from the UK and Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Sweden and Denmark. The meeting was organised after the effective measures of solidarity provided by the IDC to support the Unite the Union campaign to urge DP World for union recognition and a collective agreement for all workers at the new London Gateway, finally forced DP World to the bargaining table. “That’s the power of the IDC and that’s the power of solidarity”, Andy Green said. This was the first occasion for dockers from Belfast and Dublin to attend an IDC meeting. Dockers exchanged views on the pressures some UK and Irish ports are going through to replace full time professional dockers by casual and untrained labour. The delegates expressed their solidarity and their will to assist these ports with solidarity actions whenever it was deemed necessary. The IDC has been involved in the conflict in Lisbon the last two years, where after the deregulation caused by the new port law, the government and the companies created a second pool of casual workers attempting at replacing professional workers too. After a great show of force of European Dockers, the Lisbon union has been able, under mediation from IDC and the Port Sector Public Institute, to reach an agreement with the employers to keep their jobs and reinstate the 47 dockworkers dismissed in 2013. The next step at Portuguese ports is to tackle the critical situation at the port of Aveiro. After the report presented by the Portuguese delegation, it was agreed to intervene at different levels to reverse the current prospect of dozens of dockworkers’ collective dismissal. The delegates also discussed the current conflict affecting Greece, after the announcement of the Greek government to fully privatize the profitable ports of Thessaloniki and Piraeus. The European dockworkers are ready to support their Greek comrades to fight for decent jobs at the Greek ports and defend a different model of port ownership to the one presented by the Greek authorities. The assembly also stated their support to the ongoing conflict at the Norwegian ports and the attempts to deregulate the pool systems in Belgium and Spain.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 13:51:59 +0000
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