[be holding a national conference WOMEN: FIGHTING LOCAL…]
Socialist Organiser1984 1984-03-08Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 14 →
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be holding a national conference WOMEN: FIGHTING LOCAL GOVERNMENT CUTS!
ment organisations and individuals.
Our conference will include: thanks! THE Tories are planning to introduce a new scheme in the docks that would abolish the present National Docks Labour Board (NDLB) system that protects dock workers' jobs.
Under the NDLB - which in 1947 replaced the daily hiring of dock workers and the abuses that were entailed in it - dock workif york is sack, and empty ent ers nave quaranteed emplovment the. size of the workforce in the 54 registered ports throughout Britain. The most important ports are in Liverpool, London, Hull and Southampton. The present system is run by boards of union representatives and management, making sackings very difficult.
Nevertheless, the number of dock workers has fallen from 80,000 in 1947 to 13,500 today. New cargo handling methods such as containerisation have been the cause of this. But management have had to buy out the workers at a cost ol'£16 million a year for the past fifleen years - and by spending millions on keeping employed workers they would rather sack. Unregistered ports such as Felixstowe and Dover have been raking in business as the registered ones have declined.
As i resull, the government wants 1o ditch the existing labour prolection scheme. They realise.