Confrontation over Mersey containers

The special conference has been called for April 23 at Adelphi theatre, Strand.

Association rules state the meeting must be convened within four weeks the request being made; this is in fact with1n FIVE weeks. Apparently the delay is because Equity general secretary Gerald Croasdell has to attend the International Federation of Actors in Latin America, where the main topic for discussion will be the growing poverty and unemployment amongst Latin American theatre workers, the interference by governments through laws imprisonment and censorship 01 the free expression of ideas and of the right to organize by trade unionists to protect their rights. NATIONALIZATION under workers' control must be an immediate and not long-term woretis following the corttainers row which has blown up on Liverpool docks.

Whatever the original intentions of either party to the row, the state, in the shape of National Industrial Relations Court, has now entered decisively into the argument.

A defensive action by dockers and road-transport workers on Merseyside has been transformed into a tense confrontation between the state and the biggest union in the country.

In the background of this issue lurk the-world the port employers' plans to their labour force by more than 7 per cent this year and two years of employer-government planning to attack dockers' It is no accident that all these issues should be sparked together through the growing world supply of some big, expensive, reinforced-metal boxes for carrying cargo-containers.

Containerization allows

potentially vast increase in tonnage handled by a port.

Figures compled US W Coast before the miesent : : de slump showed each indy dual docker shifting 13 to 18 times more cargo per hour under the system than with conventional manhandling methods.

lo give just one example: a fully-loaded container ship carrying 296 truck bodies below and 140 on deck-a total weight in their containers of 6,500 tons— turned round in 40 hours compared with the five-and-a-half days the same loads would have taken previously.

The comparison in man-hours was 850 as against 11,088.

The capital costs of servicing a container berth are in the region of ten times those for conventional cargo ships. In order to realize this investment, the employers have to push ruthlessly for more rapid turnround times and drastic cuts in the work force.

A single 20-foot container alone costs about £1,000, but it carries 15 to 20 tons at a time ICI'S SALES DROP IMPERIAL CHEMICALS' sales for the first two months of 1972 have been 'considerably below expectations' chairman Jack Callard said in London yesterday.

And he warned that if the ICI's profits for the first quarter of 1972 were to recover, much depended on Tory Chancellor Barber's Budget to expand demand for the products of the chemical industry.

He said ICI's exports had been hit sharply by US moves to protectionism, which had not only restricted that market, but led to large quantities of. lowpriced goods previously destined A container being loaded at Liverpool docks and takes an absolute minimum of labour to load or unload.

The rate of job-loss resulting from containerization and other new cargo-handling methods over the last ten years on the New York waterfront alone is estimated by the men's union at 1,000 a year. And it is not just dockers' jobs which suffer.

Sir Andrew Crichton's OCLACT consortium claimed at one state that nine container ships would replace 40 conventional vessels.

This trend, repeated in other branches of sea transport, and the current trade slump means rising unemployment among seaThe slump has turned everything on its head-driving the employers forward internationfor the US coming into from Japan and elsewhere.

Callard said ICI suffered a ermanent loss of business as a result of the miners' strike and this would further depress the company's profits.

THE MICKLEOVER, Transport plant in Park Royal, London, has announced it is to close. Owned by Unigate, the firm employs 300 men. It is believed it still has orders for 650 field ambulances-150 more will be made at the plant and 500 subcontracted.

TRADES UNIONS ALLIANCE MEETINGS N LONDON Thursday March 30, 8 p.m. Bricklayers Arms, Tottenham High Rd., N17 (off White Hart Lane). 'Report back neeting from Wembley. The Scarborough conference' S EAST: Thursday, March 30, 8 p.m. Deptford • Engineers' Club, nr. New Cross Station. 'Report back from Wembley Pool'.

A decision on whether, or how soon, to transfer the Churchill production to Coventry will be made in August.

Young said the rigorous slimming of the group 'has led to an altogether healthier hard core to the business'.

And he added: "The best course for the company is being kept under constant review.' WANDSWORTH: Thursday March 30, 8 p.m. Selkirk Hotel, Silkirk Rd, Tooting. 'Empire Pool and building the revolutionary party.' ACTON: Tuesday April 4, 8 p.m. Mechanics Arms, Churchfield Road. 'Empire Pool and building the revolutionary EAST LONDON: Tuesday April 4, 8 p.m. Aberfeldy Pub, Aberfeldy Street, nr. Backwall Tunnel. 'Building the revolutionary party and the fight for docks jobs'.