xports hi is action spreads
Page 6
Page 7
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• Dover's customs men decided to prolong the agony this week and extend their goslow work-to-rule for 72 hours from lOpm Sunday night, 10 May. They had already orchestrated a campaign of stoppages and delays at the end of last week in support of a pay claim battle with their employers, the Government.
As Commercial Motor went to press, there were rumours that the industrial action could be intensified again during the coming week and that the delays could spread to other ports — but the customs men's union, the Civil and Public Services Association, was keeping tight lipped about its plans.
Most of Britain's major international haulage groups have been affected by the dispute.
According to Russ Peters, managing director of the Essex-based international haulage firm Martintrux and chairman of the Road Haulage Association's international group: "The customs officers have been deliberately delaying all export movements. People have been finding it hard."
Last Monday, Peters was told that drivers at Dover had attempted to mount a blockade of the port's Eastern Docks, but that the protest had failed. Otherwise, most drivers seemed resigned to a long wait on the quayside. Queues periodically built back up along Jubilee Way from the port gates though these were usually absorbed into the dock compound at night. "We've got round it," says Peters, "though there is no question that it has been a hindrance to us."
"We've had to divert trucks through Portsmouth and Poole where the customs officers have been working OK," says Hayden Richards of Swains of Stretton. The company sent a load of meat to Dover on Sunday morning for delivery in Paris the same evening. "We did not get it out of Dover until the following Monday morning," says Richards. "It was ridiculous." Hauliers have been able to import loads through Dover without too much difficulty, and those which are going out through different ports have still been coming back into the country through Dover.
12-hour delay
Christian Salvesen's Jackie Sandy says she had one truck loaded with salmon for Paris's Rungis market delayed by more than 12 hours simply because the driver could not get his forms properly stamped. "It normally takes about an hour to get the papers stamped," says Sandy. Salvesen has been diverting its trucks through Felixstowe and Folkestone.
All ferry companies have been sailing to schedule, at Dover and elsewhere, Townsend Thoresen says that hauliers missing sailings because of the dispute were finding accommodation on later ships.
The Customs and Excise department headquarters in London says that so far it has been "coping well." Certainly, support for the go-slow has not been 100% at Dover, and nonunion officials and senior managers have been working to keep things moving, albeit slowly.