In Come Stacker Trucks Out Go Dockers (Joint 'Blue' and 'White' fight against cuts?)

SHIPPING employers' demands for sweeping reductions in ship-side gangs are meeting a hostile reception from London dockers. On Monday, members of the National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers, representing all the union's dock section branches, decided to oppose the employers' demands for increased mechanization.

Meeting in Canning Town Hall, NASD branch officials decided to recommend to their members that they strengthen their organization to fight the reductions.

The shipping bosses are insisting that gangs unloading on the quayside be slashed from twelve to three men with a stacker truck. Gangs employed on delivery to motor vans would be reduced from twelve to four men with a stacker truck and driver.

Barge delivery gangs of twelve would be cut to ten men and two stacker trucks.

At present the unions do not permit van, rail and barge delivery to take place at the same time. The employers would like to have ten-men gangs with two stacker trucks loading all three at once.

Brooms round their waists

'All we need now is brooms tied round our waists while we are working so we can sweep the quay at the same time and make the bosses really happy,' cracked one docker.

Although feeling is running high on the docks against the employers' proposals, neither the main executive council of the NASD nor the Transport and General Workers' Union has yet made an official statement.

I understand, however, that the Ocean Lay Committee of the TGWU, which represents the 'white union' men in the Royal group, has gone on record against the proposals.

TGWU members tell me that committee members suggested that an approach be made to the 'blue union' for a joint fight against any cuts in the labour force.

The dockers are incensed by the fact that although three men will be doing the work previously done by twelve, dockers will not earn an extra penny for this.

45 men's wages saved

Many cargoes pay about 12s. per hundred boxes for a gang of twelve. For a gang of three the rate will be 3s. a hundred. The bosses, therefore, stand to gain 9s. on every hundred boxes of cargo.

On ships such as the 'Argentina Star'—a Blue Funnel Line ship which when it docks at the Royal Victoria generally has five gangs working ship-side—the new manning rate would mean a reduction from sixty men to fifteen, saving the employers forty-five men's wages.

If the employers are able to implement their demands they will certainly follow this by demanding cuts in the dock register itself.

Employers are hardly likely to see any point in saving on actual labour costs and then paying out increased attendance money to those dockers made idle by the cuts.

The slowness with which the dockers' leaders at official level have reacted to this latest attack from the employers is alarming.

The gains made by dock workers since the end of the war are seriously jeopardized and can only be defended by the action of the rank and file on a national scale.

It would be wrong to believe that the employers can somehow be persuaded by gentle reasoning to give up their plans.

National portworkers' movement needed

What is needed now is an organized campaign throughout all the ports, based upon joint inter-union committees, official or otherwise.

By means of leaflets, a dockers' paper and dock gate meetings, these committees could prepare a national portworkers' movement to resist the cuts.

They would also serve as a real warning to the employers that if they insist on going ahead with their plans they will be confronted with a national stoppage.