Targeting private sector workers

The Cochin Port Staff Association has been reaching beyond its traditional membership to organise privately employed workers and people who perform port related works in any form. Like any union, our strength depends on the number of our members. One major challenge for us therefore, is that the liberalisation policy of our government has banned direct union recruitments at entry level to permanent jobs since 1990.

The strength of permanent port workers at national level has depleted to the current figure of 66,000, from 150,000 in 1990, yet productivity has almost doubled in the present fiscal year. The efforts of many private cargo handling workers have been a critical factor in this increase in productivity, but these workers are underpaid, unorganised and deprived of social security benefits.

Globally, the multinationals have been keen to casualise port work in order to weaken trade union movements. In our port the private port workers have been exploited by middlemen, who until recently supplied labour for stevedoring works. We fought hard against this evil along with port management and finally, with the assistance of the Kerala state government, we were able to bring the system of private labour supply for stevedoring under the Headload Workers Act, which is effective from January 2007.

The Act provides for decent wages and social security benefits to workers and avoids the interference of middlemen, thus cutting down cargo handling costs. Now our union is on a similar warpath to bring private logistic operators under the Motor Transport Workers Act 1961.

Our managing committee has established some new union infrastructure, such as separate offices and office bearers, in our efforts to organise private workers. We are campaigning to enrol all categories of these workers, as we know that our future survival depends upon it. To date a good number of logistic operators, private shore and onboard supervisors, and cargo handling workers have been enrolled.

One target for us is to organise private workers engaged by Dubai Port World in the erstwhile Rajiv Gandhi Container Terminal. Slowly we are achieving momentum in this aspect, though we are lying low in wait for a more conducive atmosphere, since the company appears to be making everyone jobless who joins a union.

Recently they have implemented a computerised NAVIS system to locate and identify containers, resulting in a number of job losses for the supervisors who worked under private transport container operators. We have enrolled these individuals as our members and have been able to negotiate a compensation settlement for them.

In the organised permanent port workers sector also we have been keeping vigil to enrol new members whenever they are recruited. Despite stiff competition from other trade unions we continue to represent more than 55 per cent of permanent port workers at Cochin Port. 

-Thomas Sebastion, Cochin Port Staff Association, India

Challenge of anti-union employment

Liberalisation, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing, downsizing and casualisation have drastically affected employment, terms and conditions, and union membership and strength in the transport sector in countries like Pakistan.

The present the total working strength at the port of Karachi is around 5,000, out of which 4000 workers are unionised. Around 300 contract workers are on fixed stipend and non-unionised. Around 500 workers from the Ports Security and Port Fire Service cannot join a trade union under the amended labour laws of our country. Janitorial services are outsourced, having a workforce of 100. Besides this two global network terminals (GNTs) are operating at the port of Karachi, employing unorganised workers.

Apart from our present membership, we are campaigning to organise contract employees working under the exploitative terms and conditions of employment at the Port of Karachi.

We are also engaged in organising the workers at the two GNTs, namely Karachi International Container Terminal (Hutchison) and Pakistan International Container Terminal (IFC) – without much success. Workers are apprehensive about the risk of losing their jobs if they become members of any union. A lot of follow-up support is needed. But we are engaged with them for a positive outcome.

Around 2,000 unionised workers are employed at the port of Qasam, 40 kilometres from Karachi. No union at this port is affiliated to the ITF but we are engaged with one of the unions, which is trying to join the ITF family. One GNT, Dubai Port World, is operating at the Port of Qasam with a non-union workforce. We are trying to establish contacts with them.

-Abdul Razzak, Karachi Port Trust Labour Union, Pakistan

Vision for a new organising force

Our membership had declined from some 2 million to 820,000 in 20 years. While we had effectively “managed” this decline in the face of tremendous hostility, we had no strategy for growth. Then in 2003 we embarked on a new organising strategy to grow our union and win on the issues important to our members.

Our national strategy has to-date yielded us a net gain of some 35,000 new members in addition to our everyday “normal” recruitment activity.

Our organising model recognises that “workers don’t joint trade unions for fun” and our organising ideology is clear that “unions grow by organising to win, recognising power as the key to success… the balance of power shifts as workers organise.”

We have asked ourselves some taxing but fundamental questions as part of our strategy to refocus ourselves: Why are we here? What sort of a union do we want to be? How do we re-engage with workers on their terms? How do we involve workers themselves in rebuilding their unions and resolving the issues that are important to them?

A key element of our model is to employ and train “organisers” as part of an investment strategy for our future and we currently employ 72 nationally to work on sectoral campaigns.

We are now balloting our membership on a proposed merger with a second major British trade union, Amicus, to form a new union. Such a union would be the largest in Great Britain and Ireland with around 2 million members and would be an organising force, unionising millions of workers, for the 21st century.

-Steve Turner, Transport and General Workers’ Union, Great Britain

Training and recruitment strategies

Organising and raising the awareness of the workforce are among our priority objectives. We will be implemementing regular training programmes, revised, analysed and tailored to the needs of the workforce.

We have already taken the first steps to create and organise a new union for dockers. We are encouraging the active involvement of dockers who show leadership capacities and know and understand the workings of a union affiliated to the ITF.

Another of our goals, relating to recruitment and reaching new groups of workers, is to help to completely resolve their employment problems with companies that carry a flag of convenience.

-Allan López and Marlom Tovar, SIREMAH, Reformed Union of Seafarers of Honduras

Have your say

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