DN Debate. The dockworkers announces strike in several Swedish ports

on Wednesday, 23 January launches Swedish Hamnarbetarförbundet nationwide industrial action including stop work in Umeå, sweden, Karlshamn, Helsingborg and Halmstad. More actions will follow around the country the next few days. The aim is to achieve a nationwide collective agreement with the employers ' association Swedish Ports. The notice added in 14 January.

the Conflict is a result of the Swedish Ports utestängningspolicy. In 2018, the Swedish Hamnarbetarförbundet and the Swedish Ports, on seven occasions, have been in negotiations on just this. The end result was, unfortunately, that the employers ' association rejected the Hamnarbetarförbundets proposal to sign a substantially identical agreement, together with the Swedish Ports already have with the Swedish the Swedish transport union. Thus we are now being forced out in a battle that threatens to become protracted, infected, and costly for all concerned.

Half of the country's port workers have been without a contract for nearly five decades? The answer is that in april of last year introduced Sweden's Ports and its member companies a national utestängningspolicy. It means that the Hamnarbetarförbundets 1300 members and representatives are excluded from all the information, all the negotiations and all cooperation in the ports. Our departments have been thrown out of their facklokaler. Everything with reference to that we have no collective agreement.

If no one on the floor has the mandate to stop the acute hazards or to ensure that life and health go before the produktionshets we run the risk of losing body parts, or, in the worst cases, lose their lives.

It is often claimed that Hamnarbetarförbundet not interested in signing a collective bargaining agreement and thus would be outside of the Swedish model. It is a nonsense. The association has sought to sign a collective agreement since it was founded in 1972. The last major national avtalskonflikten the 1980s resulted not in any private agreement, but was instead a practice, where Hamnarbetarförbundet have participated in the negotiations and security duties out in the ports. Transport, however, has the sole party to the central agreement. Swedish Ports new utestängningsbeslut meant, therefore, that the established pragmatic compromises suddenly thrown over the table.

the Swedish Ports policy means that over one hundred selected health and safety representative around the country have been deprived of their mandates for that they belong to the ”wrong” unions. When an accident occurs in the ports it will often dramatically. So when safety inspections and risk assessments, always store away or are carried out in secret by someone who does not know the current business operations, it is our members and colleagues who pay the price.

If no one on the floor has the mandate to stop the acute hazards or to ensure that life and health go before the produktionshets we run the risk of losing body parts, or, in the worst cases, lose their lives. Konfliktvapnet should not be used lightly, but as time has gone on, concerns about the plant to any of our co-workers to die on the quayside.

the Answer to that is simple: because our covenant is a basdemokratisk union. In practice, this means that it is always the members who decide how the union should respond to questions. This applies to everything from local schemaförhandlingar of daily life at the centre of decisions.

In the fall, held a national membership vote with 84 percent majority gave the board a mandate to give notice of the termination of the current avtalskonflikten. The pampfria the organizational model, the inter-democracy and the proximity between the elected representatives and members have created a demanding but effective trade union culture that led to the dockers continued to choose Hamnarbetarförbundet. We know that not everyone shares our trade union philosophy, but demanding respect for our right as a worker in a democratic country to be represented in the way we ourselves have chosen.

A hängavtal does not give us the influence we need. Swedish Ports have thus rejected the Hamnarbetarförbundets proposal for a homonymous central collective agreements. Our preferred option – to conclude a avtalssamarbete together with the Transport seems today even more distant. Rather than return the industry to the other parties to that we shall take out a so-called hängavtal.

It contains no wage rates, working hours or rules. Instead, it is a ordfattig piece of paper which states that the Hamnarbetarförbundet be subordinated to all existing and future agreements between Swedish Ports and another trade union organization. With us, employers thus do not have to negotiate and agree, even if we committed ourselves to fredsplikt.

What score is it, then, with a medlemsstyrt trade unions, if we do not even have a place at the negotiating table?

the Stevedoring need cooperation and long-term peace. There isn't practically try to force half of the country's dock workers to wind down its trade union organisation, but let us as a full party to the contract.