container commentary
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Liverpool red herring
NHATEVER the merits, no matter which side
s right or wrong, whenever an industrial dis)ute turns into a strike it is usually the haulier Nho suffers. (I stress the word "usually" )ecause this does not apply when the railways 3top work.) Car transporter operators, steel arriers and the like have all felt the pinch, and lauliers contemplating the carriage of contain3rs as their principal "normal usershould :hink twice about putting all their eggs into the )rie containerized basket—at least until the :eething stage is past.
While containerization is currently dominaing the export and distribution scene, the punks are worried about an apparently small but levertheless dangerous storm cloud which is ooming over the whole international cargo ront the dock labour problem. At present no )igger than a man's hand, it could in the very tear future engulf the whole industry, threatenng exports, wrecking balance of payments )conomics and generally affecting all con:erned.
Last month's dock strike at Liverpool over vho should man the Aintree inland container )ase is considered to be nothing more than a ed herring. The area for real concern has nothng to do with "who does what?"—but whether t should be done at all.
The kernel of the trouble in Britain is still at Filbury where the union is still (at the time of vriting) blocking all future agreements over :ontainer handling. Ironically it is over Tilbury, oo, that the container giants of the Australian un (OCL and ACT) are, in the view of many in he industry, "prolonging the agony" at trenendous cost to themselves, in fulfilment of iromises made to prospective customers that :ontainerized goods will reach Australia at a ertain cost and within a certain time. There will be other "Liverpools" unless negotiations t national and international level are insisted pon.
Leaving aside the question of whether or lot the services are as successful as at first inticipated (they are known to be underitilized—OCL's Botany Bay, for instance, :arried 579 less than her capacity of 1,300 on ler first voyage), the transhipment of containIrs between England and the Continental ports if departure is costing about £100,000 per ound trip per vessel, and the fears are that the wo consortia are playing into the hands of the [Mon: that the only outcome will be that rates vill have to be raised which, in turn, could wing shippers back to conventional, breakiulk cargo services.
Back to that storm cloud again, which, inidentally, comes to us from across the Atlantic where the container concept (and co ntainerizaion labour troubles) started. It is the American cene that should be closely studied because. -1 this field, the Americans are the trendetters.
Last October, at an international container nference in Baltimore, US dockers' leader Thomas Gleason spelt out to shippers °A carriers his 116,000 strong union's feelings about containerization. In a nutshell he said: "We don't want money; we don't particularly want security: we just want our jobs". Higher pay, more hours off and more benefits for a dwindling labour force did not add up to true, overall gains for port labour generally which, he said, was determined not to be boxed in by the container.
Gleason, who led his men in a successful (for them) three months' strike earlier this year, paralysing the whole of the US east coast —affecting the incomes of some hauliers here, incidentally—told delegates at Baltimore that the International Transport Workers Federation had recently passed a resolution which said, among other things; "Every effort will be made to maintain employment in the transport industries at the highest possible levels and in particular to ensure that the packing and unpacking of seagoing containers is and will continue to be done by dock labour within the docks and/or the vicinity of the docks".
It is this type of massive universal opposition that port employers and shipfines are up against. Until there is international agreement over container handling and dock labour, strikes like the one at Liverpool could crop up anywhere.