Dockers want wide support
By John Spencer
1972John SpencerDocks Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
for pay law fight MERSEYSIDE dock stewards are to 'seek support' in the wider trade union movement before fighting the Tory pay control law.
A 3,000-strong mass meeting yesterday morning was told that dockers alone could not defeat the law, which has blocked implementation of a five-hour cut in the working week agreed in May of this year.
Dockers who asked from the floor of the meeting for re-imposition of a black on the Seaforth container terminal opened in May after the hours cut was promised—were told by stewards' chairman Jim Symes that the hours issue could not be tackled 'in isolation' The stewards are to approach the Liverpool trades council and their opposite numbers in other industries in Merseyside to sound out the possibility of united action of all those hit by the law.
Last week a five-man delegation from the port stewards' committee travelled to London, where port employers decided that law prevents them granting any increase in the annual pay review due on January 1.
They discussed with London docks stewards, and met Jack Jones, Transport and General Workers Union secretary, and T&GWU docks secretary Tim O'Leary. Jones agreed to travel to Merseyside to speak both to the port stewards' committee and a dockers' mass meeting on the issues.
But the T&GWU leaders are understood to have strongly advised against any form of industrial action by dockers which would bring them in to conflict with the pay control law.
And it was evident from yesterday's meeting that a majority of stewards agreed with this line.
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