TILBURY dockers sacked by the Port of London Authority for their trade union activity will not get their jobs back, despite Britain's longest-ever industrial tribunal case ruling that they were unfairly dismissed.
Meanwhile, a boss the tribunal branded untruthful has bought the port at a giveaway price.
HOME NEWS IFor a Red, Green and Feminist Youth Movement Public Meeting - All Welcome 7pm Thursday 16 December Davenant Centre Whitechapel High Street Between Aldgate East & Whitechapel tubes The Court of Appeal recently rescinded a reinstatement order on the grounds that it was impractical for the PLA to re-engage the Transport and General Workers' Union activists, after the authority insisted that there were no current vacancies.
The men were sacked in 1989, after a strike to secure terms and conditions equal to those enshrined in the old National Dock Labour Scheme. All unions at the port were immediately derecognised.
The subsequent industrial triLiberation! bunal, which ran for 197 days between 1989 and 1992, found that they had been dismissed on the grounds of their trade union activities. John McNab, Tilbury's chief executive, was singled out as untruthful and evasive under cross examination.
Only four of the workers have since secured jobs. Meanwhile, Tilbury has returned to recruiting casual labour, despite reassurances given when the dock labour scheme was abolished.
The port was privatised in March 1992, with Mr McNab leading a management-employee buy-out which paid £32 million. The terms of the deal were highly advantageous.
The PLÁ had previously borrowed tens of millions to upgrade facilities at Tilbury, but retained the entire debt. Moreover, it transferred £60 million of net tax-losses to the port priorto the sale, to be offset against corporation tax. The PLA will also pick up the tab for the unfair dismissals.
The National Dock Labour Scheme, established by a Labour government in 1947, ended decades of dockers plying for casual work day-to-day. The Tories hated what they considered to be a "iobs for life' guaranțee, and ended it 1989, beginning a new era of flexible working practices on the docks.
Some 7,200 of the 9,200 registered dockers took severance pay of up to £35,000 each, with the Government paying half. An independent report from Cardiff Business School attributed this to employers pushing through compulsory redundancies to 'systematically dismiss former trade union activists, older dockers and all medically-restricted men'.
All told, the Tories predicted that 4,000 new jobs would be created; in fact, overall employment is down 11,000.
Redundant workers were rehired as casuals, with 'a marked deterioration in terms and conditions of employment, in particular extended hours of work'. New shift patterns increased work-related stress, with Tees dockers reporting feeling like zombies'.
Abolition of the scheme has led to no appreciable new investment or discernible improvement in international competitiveness, but has created 'instability', 'fragmentation' and over-capacitv instead.
Health and safety provision has declined dramatically. While national statistics are no longer collated, within the Associated British Ports group accidents rose 33 per cent between 1989 and 1991, to reach a level double that of the early eighties. ABP profits soared from £28.2 million to £76.1 million over the same period.
For the taxpayers, its a different story. It was initially estimated that the net cost to the state of abolishing the scheme would be £25 million. The final bill was £141 million.
Yet a Department of Employment press release boasts: 'The benefits of abolishing the dock labour scheme in 1989 far exceeded the costs', with 'the removal of market distortions' meaning that 'the port users have a much wider selection of commercially competitive ports'.
The Cardiff study came to a slightly different conclusion: "The restructuring of Britain's port industry has been facilitated by the Government, financed by the taxpayer, exploited by the major port authorities and paid for by the former registered dock labour force'.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 53, November 27 1993, Page 3 Socialist
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