THE NATIONAL NUS STRIKE 25 YEARS ON

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: april 2013 :: RMTnews 15 I n the 1980s the flagging out of vessels to flags of convenience and the privatisation of Sealink in 1983 led to job losses and a fall in union membership. P&O Shipping, led by the Thatcherite Jeffrey Sterling, pursued a cost-cutting agenda in the run-up to completion of the Channel Tunnel and public confidence in the industry’s safety record was rocked by the January 1987 ‘Herald of Free Enterprise’ disaster in which 193 crew and passengers died. In December 1987 the company told the union, that it intended to reduce the annual wage bill of £35 million by £6 million by cutting 500 out of 2,300 jobs and reducing earnings by an average of £25 a week. Furthermore they would make seafarers work an extra one month a year and impose, in some cases, a work rota where some people would be working for 72 hours continuously. In January 1988, the National Ferry Port Committee co-ordinated a 7,000 strong national ferry strike in support of NUS members at the Isle of Man Steam Packet in dispute over job losses. Belfast-based members were forced off the Saga Moon in handcuffs by the RUC and replaced by cheap foreign nationals. Over 2,300 seafarers in Dover also refused to accept the P&O ultimatum, voted to strike and stopped work in February 1988. Some workers also asked why a company which had just announced record profits, including £51.7 million from its European Ferries Group, needed to act in such a fashion. Mass picketing had some success and for almost two months P&O ferries lay idle. They only sailed after an elaborate operation involving the flying of scabs to the continent and the sailing of ferries with a skeleton crew. Injunctions were granted to Sealink and P&O under the terms of the Tory 1984 Trade Union Act. In separate proceedings the High Court found the union in breach of provisions in the Employment Act 1980 prohibiting solidarity action. In all the union faced fines and costs in excess of £100,000. The NUS called off the action but members at Dover voted to take further action. In March P&O threatened ten-day dismissal notices and the use of non-union, overseas nationals. In response the union called a national strike ballot, a move scuppered by the company again making use of anti-trade union legislation. An injunction was granted against the ballot going ahead. As talks with the NUS at ACAS against company redundancy proposals foundered, support flooded in for the strikers from around the world. The company de- recognised the NUS and arranged for scab crews to operate vessels out of Rotterdam. The NUS responded by calling for all UK-flagged vessels to come out in support of the strikers at Dover. Members on the oil rig supply and standby vessels entered the dispute bringing the North Sea oil and gas industry to a virtual stand-still. In early May the High Court sequestrated the union and fined it over £150,000. Union offices around the country, including Maritime House in Clapham, were taken over by court appointed officers and all NUS assets were frozen. But members in Scotland realised that decisions of the English courts could not be enacted on in Scotland and went into occupation in the union’s Aberdeen premises before the NUS was taken into the high court in Edinburgh to remove protesters. A further hefty fine was imposed by the courts on the union for the ‘crime’ of supporting so-called secondary action. By early June the remaining strikers voted to call off the action. The assault on the union had reaped a terrible price including the loss of thousands of seafaring jobs. The use of the Tory anti-trade union laws had left the NUS facing financial ruin. One way to combat this crisis and the decline in membership was through merger. As a result the National Union of Railwaymen and the NUS began discussions with a view to amalgamation. Following a ballot in favour of merger of both unions’ memberships, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Union (RMT) was launched on September 6 1990 at TUC Conference in Blackpool. THE NATIONAL NUS STRIKE 25 YEARS ON In 1988 the National Union of Seamen launched national strike action against dangerous cost-cutting and job losses