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Solidarity On The Cork Docks
cork |
anti-capitalism |
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Saturday May 17, 2008 12:37 by Kevin Doyle - Workers Solidarity Movement - Cork
In mid April, Cork dock workers took action in support of the crew of The Defender, a cargo ship owned by Forestry Shipping from Riga, Latvia but registered in Cambodia. Related Links: Siptu - International Transport Workers Federation
Q: You were at work when you heard about the situation of the crew. Can you tell me what happened?
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Comments (3 of 3)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3My name is Tony Ayton. I was the first full-time inspector appointed for Ireland by the International Transport Workers Federation. (ITF) I have now retired. Ken Fleming is now the Inspector .Before my appointment, the welfare of unpaid or generally abused seafarers was left to individual officials of SIPTU to deal with, if they could, on top of their other duties. I was one of those officials.
During my time and now in Ken Flemings time, the most effective weapon to use against rogue shipowners is worker solidarity. If dockers, won't load/unload the vessel and/or the pilots would take her in/out, or the tugs won't assist then we have the shipowner by the short and curlys
Give Ken Fleming all the help and support you can. I know I am biased because he is a friend of mine - but he is a great and dedicated trade Unionist, deeply committed to the welfare of seafarers
It's really heartwarming to read of an action like this and the success of the non-violent action of simply laying down tools. It's another world on board ship and rogue owners might think they can treat human beings like pawns and get way with it "because no-one will be bothered about it".
That's all the more reason why it's so important to have people like the ITFand SIPTU (No 5 Branch) to show that other people do care and will not let these injustices happen.
Well done to the Harbour Board workers and pilots, to Kevin Doyle for the interview and story, to Peter Andrers, Stephen McCarty , Timmy Ricken for the interview, to Ken Fleming and Tony Ayton and anyone else involved. I was particularly delighted with the response of the interviewee who said: "We weren’t too worried where they [the sailors] were from". Not being worried where they were from shows real worker solidarity.
There's just one little point still niggling at my brain. The interviewee said "We were notified that they had all been paid". I was wondering, in view of the initial non-payment , who gave this notification and was it trustworthy. That is, could it be that the ship owners got their work done and put to sea with a promise that might later be broken or re-bargained with the sailors who would then be in a more compromised position. It would be good, in my opinion, if ITF would follow up this initial success by contacting the sailors at some other port and finding out exactly what happened after their action. Or maybe this has already been done?
Keep up thr good work
In relation to the point about ensuring that the seafarers actually get to keep the money that has been recovered for them, it is not uncommon for rogue shipowners to try to claw the money back, once the vessel is out of port.
For that reason the ITF always try to get the seafarer(s) to hand over the money to the ITF inspctor, who gives them an offical receipt and then lodges the money in a special interest bearing seafares wages bank account . The seafarer(s) can then, when they feel it is safe to do so- contact the ITF - which is a worldwide organisation - and draw their money plus any interest earned.
Sadly, many seafarers do not use this facility and we have stories - always hard to prove ,of seafarers being beaten-up and the money taken.
There are occasions when we got the seafarer repatriated and they insisted on taking fairly large sums of money in cash which we recoverd for them. Next we heard that elements of the security services in their home country, searched them, found and then took a lot of the cash, as the price for letting them through without "trouble" It would be best if I did not name the countries, but they were not in Western Europe.
Tony Ayton