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by CM reporter HAS INDUSTRY been conned over the dockers' reduced corridors of power?
Now that the dockers' exclusive cargo-handling area has been reduced to half a mile — just one tenth of the original five miles limit that was contained in the Act — operators are asking these questions: • When does the Act become law?
• Where does the half-mile start?
• And how will we be affected by having to employ registered dock workers?
There were signs of confusion. consternation and apathy among riverside operators when we spoke to them this week.
It is estimated that more than 60 per cent of warehouses fall within this half-mile zone surrounding the tidal waterways.
Many companies • told us they simply had not had the time to assess the new legislation which received the Royal Assent on Monday or measure its impact.
A spokesman for Humber McVeigh Transport summed up the feelings of other firms. "Nobody knows what's going to happen," he said. The company thought that two of its operations — in Grimsby and Immingham — would come under the jurisdiction of the Act.
Among Thameside firms the reaction was just as uncertain. One haulage company was not sure how to measure the half mile. Was it from the water's edge or from the dock gates? (It is from the water's edge.) At Whiteoak Transport, the complaint was: "We haven't had enough time to go into it yet." The spokesman knew it was within the half-mile corridor, but he had no idea what would be the effect on its labour force.
One company, in a state of confusion about the measure, was planning to ask CM to explain. Other firms were more certain. "We're over half a mile from the docks," said Heaton's Transport. "If what we understand is correct then we won't be affected in any way."
Some companies, like Dart-. ford Wharfage, explained that it already employed dock labour and foresaw no changes in operations because of the Act.
But the director of one firm with extensive dealings with dock labour said he would rather close than employ dockers – and the firm is within the corridor, so he may well have to.
In East Anglia, Road Haulage Association Eastern area secretary Mr Ken Williams had no allusions: "It is silly to say that the teeth have been drawn from the Act. There will still be far-reaching consequences for a lot of people," he said.
And Metropolitan area secretary Mrs Deirdre Kohler confessed that it was a year since a meeting had discussed the docks problems.
"A lot of people have got the wind up and moved out of the area," she said. "No one has sat down and worked out what it means, but a lot are sitting back and waiting to see what happens."
The Act requires enabling legislation to be brought in by Order in Council, and the Employment Department will be preparing a scheme to get the Act into operation.
A spokesman told CM: "We will be bringing the Act in as soon as we can in the New Year, but it will not all come in on the same day."