Port education as ITF policy

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محتوى الصفحة: Home > مجلة النقل الدولي "Transport International" > Issue 13 October 2003 > Port education as ITF policy

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By Kees Marges, ITF's Dockers's Section Secretary based in London

The ITF is now six years into the implementation of a detailed initiative to help dockers' affiliates cope with the ongoing process of port privatisation and other reforms – a process that so often is misused as an opportunity to undermine the position of organised labour.

The initiative was formulated from two resolutions adopted at the ITF Dockers' Section Conference in Miami on 9 and 10 June 1997 (at the 39th ITF Congress in New Delhi the following year, it became enshrined in Chapter 8 of The Delhi Policy).

One of the two resolutions stipulated that port reforms should only be introduced in consultation with port workers' unions, and on the basis of an agreement in which the unions are partners. The other, which triggered the ITF's ongoing anti-union busting campaign, called for active opposition to anti-union practices by governments and private terminal operators.

These resolutions were accompanied by an International Solidarity Contract, which dockers' unions were invited to sign as a pledge of support for one another in the event of any cases of union-busting or enforced reform without consultation. The International Solidarity Contract also obliged the ITF to initiate international campaigns on behalf of any affiliate that might be in need of support but unable to ask for it, for example for legal reasons.

At the heart of the initiative was an undertaking from the ITF to provide trade union education to affiliates involved in port reforms. As a result many seminars and other meetings have since taken place – for example in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Russia, Turkey, Ghana, Kenya and India.

Some of them have been carried out with the financial or even personal assistance of other trade unions. The Central America project for unions in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, for example,

was carried out in cooperation with the AFL-CIO Solidarity Centre and financially supported by the Dutch confederation FNV and Danish SiD. Other seminars, including those in India, have been carried out and financed entirely by the ITF.

These seminars have set out to furnish trade union activists with a greater understanding of the issues and stakes at play in the port reform process. They offer a toolkit to help trade unionists take an active part in the process, in the interests of their members. They have had a small but potentially important influence on the efforts of affiliates to generate bargaining and campaigning strategies to protect and advance the cause of labour during the reform process.

The ITF is keen to encourage more affiliates to seek its assistance with education activities on this issue, or to organise their own programmes based on the information and experience we have gathered so far.

Battles lost and won

The struggle to turn education into action in the ports of India, by Mahendra Sharma , Deputy Regional Secretary, ITF Asia/Pacific Region, based in New Delhi, India. more >>

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Issue 13 October 2003

صفحات أخرى لـ Port education as ITF policy:
Battles lost and won

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