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“Just in time” production is putting transport workers under intolerable pressure, says ITF
24 September 2008
Transport workers are facing increasing pressures as a result of attempts to speed up the movement of goods, ITF General Secretary David Cockroft told delegates at a United Nations conference in Greece last week.
Cockroft was speaking at the first day of a two-day conference of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) on 17-18 September in Piraeus. Attended by politicians, industry leaders and academics, the conference focused on ways of freeing up major bottlenecks in seaports’ hinterland connections, caused by growing volumes of international trade.
Cockroft warned delegates: “We are only too well aware of the desire for ever more flexibility. Well if that means, longer hours, more unsocial hours, less rest and exhausted workers struggling to deliver goods at exactly the appointed hour even if they occasionally fall asleep at the wheel, forget it. We live it a world of just in time production, of a supply chain which has become so sensitive to even small delays that it is putting intolerable pressures on ordinary workers, be they seafarers, portworkers, barge crews, truckers or even rail workers.
These problems could be avoided, however, if there was proper dialogue with workers and if they were encouraged to set up democratic worker-controlled trade unions.
On 18 September, Cockroft also met with affiliates in Athens, where he introduced the organising globally programme, and separately with Greek port workers’ unions, where discussions took place on the concessioning of Piraeus and Salonika container terminals to COSCO and Hutchinson respectively.
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