Long and unsociable hours, dangerous situations and low wages. This is the truth of the dockers of Liverpool. They have an undeniable demand: that Peel Ports give their staff a salary that rises in line with inflation. And they are furious because their bosses are screaming lies. , about what they say port workers are earning from the salary packages they offer.
Jim, a dock engineer, told Socialist Worker: “We’re tired of Peel making huge sums of money. They share those benefits with the workforce. It is simply general greed. Their precedence is the shareholders, us. However, 18 months ago, we were key workers. People now say enough.
Phil, an engineer and representative of the Unite union, added: “Everyone is suffering from emerging prices. Our employer may very well give us the agreement we want. It’s an economic trickle. “
Steven, a port agent and representative, told Socialist Worker, “They devalue us, which allows us to take that position while they rake it. We sat two hundred feet in the air with winds up to 50 miles consistent with one hour using 40 tons. “Containers. One move and can kill your colleague. We paint in the snow, wind and rain. We just need a little respect for what we do.
Peel Ports made profits of £141 million last year, benefiting 12 shareholders. The workers’ demands would charge the company six days of annual profits. There is more than enough cash to pay the salaries of the 580 port officials, guilty of loading and unloading ship shipments: 60 engineers and 40 controllers.
But the staff is united on the picket line and describes their appointments as “like family. “Port agent Louis told Socialist Worker that the pickets had been “fantastic. “Pickets. And music, hamburgers, flags and political conversations animate the pickets.
“We’ve all met and met other people we don’t necessarily meet every day at work,” Louis added. “We had delegates from Chile, Sweden, Spain, Denmark, Portugal and the United States. And many of Australian Longshoremen.
This week is the fifth week of action, and the strikers have made it clear that they will avoid until they win. Meanwhile, the dock comes to a standstill.
Steven said: “We’re told the business is failing and it’s losing money. The question I would like to answer is whether a director of such a company, how can he get a £600,000 bonus?
“It’s ridiculous. The other people above us can take whatever they want and yet expect us to settle for a genuine pay cut. “
Louis added: “We are already suffering from running 60 hours a week, and we will continue to fight more. We spend more time at work than at home. We deserve not to leave home at the end of the week still skinny.
Although longshoremen work overtime, if overtime is carried over to the following week, it is not paid as overtime because the pay is calculated on a weekly basis. fitness so they can stay awake.
Louis criticized the “stubbornness” of the bosses of Peel. No we are grabbing the dockers, we need other people to know the facts. “RPI inflation, taking into account accommodation prices compared to the lowest CPI rate Peel Ports likes, is now 12. 6%.
“They weren’t offering us 12 percent,” Phil explained. I won a letter from the port manager: the engineers were offered 9 percent. “
Steven explained: “They gathered everyone’s P60s throughout last year and created an average of £43,000. First of all, it’s the average. Secondly, last year the hours were distorted due to Covid. Workers are transparent that they need a building in line with IPRs. “That’s the bare minimum,” Steven explained.
“David Huck, Peel’s chief operating officer, appears in the press making up the fact and making us look worse. It is a bit difficult for us to get our message across to the mainstream media. BBC, ITV and Liverpool Echo are on Peel-owned land in Media City in Manchester.
The meager salaries staff get mean that for the lowest paid, Unite’s strike fund provides them with more cash on the picket lines. “strike pay, it’s over £27 out of the paintings,” Steven explained.
“Huck cites figures of £43,000 for having worked more commonly full-time and partly in the same place. The maximum salary he can earn is £36,200. An average of £43,000 is ridiculous.
Some managers have paid themselves 50% of their salaries or earned £4 million in dividends. Huck has invested £100 million in the Isle of Man tax haven.
Striker Leo told Socialist Worker: “They are overpaid and yet they don’t perceive the paintings because they never painted them. People paint long hours and still have to use food banks, no one has to. We help the company to spend the days off. But we don’t need to get paid, it’s one-way traffic.
In the third week of dockworkers’ strikes, bosses announced 132 layoffs in a so-called attempt to save money. The company tried to claim the layoffs were not related to the strike, “but they came out as soon as we started the strike,” Phil said. “And it’s Mental Health Awareness Day. “
Jim added, “As long as redundancy is on the table, it will possibly not progress. We’re not going to come to an agreement when they’ve played a very dirty and typical control tactic. “
Steven called the layoffs an “alarmist tactic. ” We perceive that there is a bit of a slowdown, but in ten years, I have noticed that it happens. “We are a union, so it doesn’t matter if he has been here for ten minutes or ten years. If they take out forced or statutory dismissals, we will fight them 100%. “
To intimidate workers, the company telephoned Americans between strike weeks to ask if they would be willing to cross the picket line. Longshoremen say Peel could save money by converting rotations to 4 days and 4 days off, from five to three.
“We are guaranteed 40 hours of pay consistent with the week, but we have room to maneuver because we are available for 60 hours. But they know they don’t have the manpower to cover 4 shifts and 4 shifts,” Steven said. “There are five to three of them, and we’re running left, right and center to help fill jobs and now they’re threatening to fire us. “
Louis added that the docks import and export cars, but a company is hired to get them on and off the ships. “We can do that,” he said. Peeling costs have increased by nearly 300% during the pandemic, and our wages haven’t increased that much.
“They were charging additional fees, so if there’s a collapse in the economy, it’s corporations like Peel Ports that caused it. All they have done is thrive thanks to our hard work. Now we are being punished because we need a fair wage. “
For Louis, a win would be “a fair wage for all of us, and just an average salary, it has to be an express salary that develops for all of us. “Currently, other skill degrees in the same position are paid in the same way, as are other roles in higher degrees of ability.
“We also need the 2021 wage agreement that addresses this to be respected, as well as this year’s cost of living increase retroactive to the beginning of this year. That’s all we ask. We can delve into all sorts of questions about the wages of other dockers for the same positions and they call for pay equity.
“We ask to reach the balance point and live as we lived last year, and that our names not be slandered in the press. If we were given £43,000, there wouldn’t be a soul on the picket line. And with so many other staff on strike, it “puts an end to the ‘greedy worker’ narrative. “
“We have been in a conservative government for 12 years. We deserve to be on the street. As a country, we will have to become more powerful and more militant, otherwise we will have the occasional wave of austerity.
The dockers are determined to remain on the picket line until their dispute is won. After two weeks of strike, followed by another week, they plan to return to work after the current two-week strike and leave.
Some worry that the total moves will give bosses the opportunity to rent strikebreakers. But prolonged periods of work will mean more damage for bosses and give them less chance of catching up.
The strikers also target the sites of Peel and its shareholders and corporate partners. They protested outdoors in Media City, Doncaster Airport and Peel’s biggest shipping customer, Atlantic Container Line, with more planned across the country.
Liverpool dockers also visited the dockers of Felixstowe, who were the first to strike. Despite a few days of coordinated strikes, the shipment redirected from Liverpool was dealt with in Felixstowe.
Phil explained: “Before we went on strike, we were going to coordinate with Felixstowe so that didn’t happen. But they’re in the same union, so I don’t understand why it happened. Liverpool dockers take their case directly to Felixstowe workers. .
Longshoremen from Hull, Teesport and Southampton agreed to touch Liverpool’s cargo. Other ports want to show the same strength as Liverpool, and coordinated action would further affect skippers.
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