With great success in the first staggered Week of Action, the Dockers and the Seafarers affiliated unions in India as well as in Sri Lanka have decided to observe another Week of Action this year from December 10 to December 14. For this Week, the ports involved are from Chennai, Kochi, Paradip, Kolkata, and Haldia and Colombo. The Action includes inspection of vessels at the private terminals in these ports, owned by the multinationals like Maersk, PSA and DPW. The union activists will focus on the merchant vessels without ITF acceptable agreements. The ITF agreements, in keeping with the objectives of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), guarantee decent and negotiable wages and safety of the crew members on board the ship. In the last Week of Action, the union members inspected 43 ships and 13 ITF agreeable agreements were signed by Inspectors and the Unions in countries of beneficial ownership as a consequence of action taken in the Indian ports.Generally ITF affiliated unions in India subject the flag of convenience ships to strict inspection. According to ITF, “FOCs provide a means of avoiding labour regulation in the country of ownership, and become a vehicle for paying low wages and forcing long hours of work and unsafe working conditions.” The unions have also secured back wages for hundred of seafarers and have won court claims fighting for the crew members either cheated or/abandoned by the ship owners.
The ITF, a truly global organization, is a federation of 708 transport trade unions in 154 countries with 4,668, 950 members.
All is well that ends well.
No comments:
Post a Comment