Delaying tactics as dock strike nears
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BY ALEX MITCHELL will urge today that the national docks strike threat be lifted.
The appeal will be made at today's meeting of the dock industry's National Joint Council in London.
The basis for seeking a further postponment of the strike will be the round of negotiations begun between Jack Jones of the Transport and General Workers' Union and Lord Aldington, chairman of the Port of London Authority and former deputy chairman of the Tory Party.
The talks started on Tuesday under the auspices of a • newlycreated body called the joint authoritative committee, nicknamed 'Jack'.
The so-called high-powered committee was due to have reported within two weeksbefore the national dock strike is due to start on Friday week, June 16.
Now, however, the story has changed. The 'Financial Times' reported yesterday the committee 'is expected to take up to six weeks to study the problems of containerization and dock work' And the 'Journal of Cormerce' says: 'Meetings of the 12-man committee will take place several times a week for the next six weeks'.
It becomes abundantly clear, therefore, what the employers and Jones are attempting to do.
They have claimed to have entered detailed negotiations so they will want the threatened strike shelved.
Whether Jones and his national docks secretary, Tim O'Leary, can swing the docks delegates at next Thursday's meeting another matter.
This meeting will be lobbied by hundreds of dockers who will be staging a day-long strike to demand all-out strike action against the employers.
This lobby is the policy of the national shop stewards' 'committee, decided in London last Saturday.
Liverpool dockers have already voted to stage the token strike and join the demonstration; London dockers meet today.
The London meeting is held only days after the closedown of Southern Stevedores, which threw well over 1,000 men into the unattached pool. Previous stewards' policy was to strike if one more man was returned.
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