Dockers come together in Marrakech to renew struggle for rights, safety, labour standards.
The six demands being debated at the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) Congress are the core work and focus of the ITF Dockers’ Section – this is the central message agreed and delivered by dockers today at the ITF Congress in Marrakech.
The challenges faced by dockers around the world mirror the ITF’s emerging focus on accountability, equality, rights, safety, sustainability and the future of work – vital, interlinking work areas that can help deliver real change to the lives and livelihoods of all transport workers.
Dockers’ Section Chair, Paddy Crumlin, said: “It was dockworkers and seafarers who founded the ITF. Dockworkers know that we’ve always been on the receiving end – they use anything they can to divide us.
“Dockers expect to have the decency and dignity we deserve for the work we do, whether it’s our rights, our dignity, not living in poverty, or not having to face injury and death on the job.”
The Section’s focus on the six demands is often overlapping and includes specific challenges faced by dockers in automation, occupational safety and health, and equality.
As with many ITF sections, supply chain accountability – holding corporations at the top of supply chains to account for rights abuses within them – is a cross-cutting area of work as the corporate giants of transport and logistics increasingly integrate their supply chains and operations as they buy up various modes of transport. And with their long track record of solidarity and struggle everywhere, dockers are braced for the vital role they will play over the next five years.
“We have a five-year plan, but we cannot do this without everybody’s participation,” said newly elected Section Women’s Representative, Jessica Isbister.
“It is our unity and our solidarity that will guide us through this next five years. It’s going to be a challenging five years, we know that our fights are not getting easier, but the stronger we stick together, the more we’ll get through it.
“Promoting women and young workers is vital. The Dockers’ Section has been leading the way with that - we have 40% women on our health and safety committee, so we’re very proud of that.”
The ‘future of work’, seen through the lens of automation and digitalisation in ports, is repeatedly dressed up by profiteering companies as ‘progress’ – but the reality, as the ITF’s work in New Zealand demonstrates, is that inflated claims of productivity boosts can often be false, with dockers’ jobs on the line and their safety on the job jeopardised as a result.
“Investments are getting bigger and bigger because of automation, and they won’t have a return for 20 years – that’s why we are worried because it means there will be more pressure on working conditions,” said newly elected Dockers Section First Vice Chair, Niek Stam.
“We can be against automation, but we have to understand it. What does it mean about productivity? Because dockworkers don’t go to work to get poorer. What does it mean for the safety of jobs?
“You have to know why the employer wants to automate – and we’ve built up all the experiences we’ve had, in German ports, in the Port of Rotterdam, in other ports around the world, so we can get stronger and wiser.”
The Dockers’ Section conference comes against a backdrop of ongoing struggles against corporate profiteering faced by ITF affiliates. These include the International Longshoremen Association’s (ILA) strike action against USMX on the US East Coast, the Maritime Union of Australia’s (MUA) industrial action across Australia against Qube Ports, and the battle for respecting the basic right of freedom of association being fought by Turkish union Liman-İş against Borusan port employer, Borusan Lojistik AS.
“Being in the struggle, being on the picket lines – that’s where it happens,” said outgoing Dockers’ Section 1st Vice Chair, Willie Adams.
“You go to ground zero, you lock arms with your brothers and sisters, they look you in the eye – brother to brother, sister to sister – and you know what it’s all about. That scares our employers when they see us together.
“The power and strength that is the backbone of the ITF is in this room: dockers.
“We’re militant, strong, we have a different type of swagger. We control the supply chain, we have enormous power and our employers know it.”
Delegates also elected the ITF Dockers’ Section Committee which will drive forward the Section’s workplan over the next five years. It will be led by Paddy Crumlin, who was reelected as Chair, alongside Niek Stam as 1st Vice-Chair and Bobby Olvera Jr as 2nd Vice Chair.
