T & GWU docks chief attacks jobs strike

Workers Press no. 666, 19 January 1972 · scan page 2

Topics: Docks

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declinins market and WOLKINS the ymposium UniverOr will not do in a spoke language.

TWO THOUSAND Lyons bakery workers at Cadby Hall face redundancy by 1974 as a result of the site's projected closure.

HANGING unions are 65 eneral and Municipal Workers' Union members Pillar Patent Glazing, Strat& Tondon, who are to Amalgamated Union besing Workers. DOCK union leader Tim O'Leary yesterday attacked next week's proposed nationwide 24 hour strike against the threat to jobs at most of Britain's major ports.

His attack was made at a meeting of the Iransport and General Workers' Union's docks and waterways committee in London, where 800 dockers have just been told they will lose their jobs by the end of the year.

O'Leary's argument was that a nine-point programme for defending dock jobs had been put out for discussion in the ports, but that some stewards and committee members had jumped the gun.

The meeting was expected to discuss calls for a national docks delegate conference to discuss the crisis which will threaten 5,000-6,000 jobs in the ports by mid-june.

As the T&GWU men were meeting, there were rumblings of the crisis from the Port of London Authority.

Yesterday, PLA director-general John Lunch sent out letters to all employees warning that 800 more jobs and ten-15 more berths than previously expected are to be axed by the end of the year.

Originally 1,200 jobs were threatened.

Now the figure is 2,000, with Lunch. looking further ahead to only 45 conventional berths in London by 19741975 instead of the 54 forecast.

Since late 1967 the authority has cut back its work force from 12,500 to the current level of 8,700.

It now wants a reduction to 6,700—a drop of over 46 per cent-inside five years But it seems certain that the latter phase of this cut will not be achieved in the atmosphere of industrial peace the PLA claims for the earlier ones.

Lunch's explanations for his stiffer cut-backs include the severity of the unexpected Slump in world trade, shipowners' speeded-up shift into containerization and the faster turnrounds planned for conventional cargoes.

He confirms that discussions are taking place both locally and nationally to achieve the necessary reductions of registered dock workers - ostensibly through the 1947 Dock The plans of the PLA and the employers are designed to explode the scheme, however. Requests for a government inquiry into the scheme are already believed to have been made by the employers. miners' strike.