Rally to support striking handlers at Dublin Port

THE DUBLIN Council of Trade Unions has called on its members to join a rally on Monday in a move which has potential to escalate a strike at Dublin docks.

The strike at cargo handlers Marine Terminals Ltd in the south port has been ongoing for the last six weeks. Workers, members of Siptu, claim the company wants to introduce compulsory redundancies while cutting pay and conditions for remaining workers.

On Tuesday Lord Mayor of Dublin Emer Costello visited Marine Terminals and the striking workers and called on the company to use the “tried and tested industrial relations machinery of the State”.

In a strongly worded comment in support of the strikers, Dublin Council of Trade Unions president Phil McFadden said: “The modern Irish trade union movement was born on the Dublin docks and we certainly do not intend to see it buried there by a company whose tactics are a throwback to the early years of the last century.”

A spokesman for UK company Peel Ports, which owns Marine Terminals, said salaries of the company’s port operatives – “up to €75,000 for a crane operator” – were way above their counterparts elsewhere in the port of Dublin and in the industry generally.

“We offered up to €60,000 plus overtime, together with enhanced redundancy packages of €75,000 for volunteers. That is four times the statutory redundancy terms, but the union demanded almost double that, which is completely unrealistic.”