Comment: Dockers prepare for an unwanted fight

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محتوى الصفحة: Home > مجلة النقل الدولي "Transport International" > Issue 19 April 2005 > Comment: Dockers prepare for an unwanted fight

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Dockers and seafarers’ unions cannot have been the only ones stunned by the retabling of the failed EU ports package in October 2004. Certainly they are not the only ones now refusing to get swept up in European Commission dogma, as it seeks to push a new draft through.

Why did the outgoing European transport commissioner introduce a new ports proposal 17 days before her departure from office, and less than a year after the parliamentary defeat of the original document, without prior consultation with the key stakeholders? This is a question unanswered by the advocates of the package, who stress its “urgency” and “necessity” despite the absence at this stage of any assessment of its likely impact.

Dockers’ and seafarers’ unions have not accepted the need for a new liberalising directive in any form, let alone the current draft, which presents an even worse scenario for the port industry than its doomed predecessor. Meanwhile port operators, pilots’ representatives and individual governments have all expressed misgivings about different aspects of the package.

The new document attempts to extend cargo handling to the regular seafaring crew, as well as to unregistered, land-based staff hired by the shipowner. ITF affiliates continue to believe that this work should be performed by shore-based, registered and well-trained port workers. It is dangerously unsuitable work for over-stretched seafarers, who are not qualified to handle cargo. The seafarers concerned are already subject to fatigue on the smaller, fast-turn-around vessels that would bear the brunt of the new measures. At the same time, the paper’s treatment of pilotage as a commercial service, without taking into account its key safety role, contradicts EU policy on maritime safety.

While the proposal claims to balance competitiveness and service quality, the Commission chooses to ignore the fact that many European ports are among the most efficient and cost effective in the world. They are also already subject to fierce competition and low handling prices.

Maritime unions can take heart from the dissent voiced by most sectors of the industry over some contents of the package, and from the near universal view that the haste of its reintroduction cannot be justified. Even the Commission has acknowledged the need for an independent impact assessment of the proposed measures, and the parliamentary coordinator for the directive has spoken of slowing down its progress in a bid to calm opposition.

Perhaps most significantly, the shipowners’ body ECSA (European Community Shipowners’ Associations) has stated its wish to avoid provoking industrial action, and its view that self-handling should not become “the main issue” in the directive.
No one wants to see a repeat of the momentous industrial action that helped defeat the original draft directive in November 2004. Certainly the unions don’t want it. They would prefer to see common sense prevail and for Ports Package 2 to be swept off the table and back to the wastepaper basket it came from. X

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Issue 19 April 2005

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