Port users slam disruptive union meetings

Cape Town port users are steaming about the port authority’s insistence that meetings with union members take place during shift times – and eat into the already limited working time available. There’s a second gripe, according to port users’ spokesman Peter Newton, director of Seaboard. The agreement between the port management and the unions is that the workers must be given 48 hours’ notice of each intended meeting. While still not accepting the necessity of shift-time meetings (albeit “only occasional”, according to port management), the users demanded that they should also be informed simultaneously – “So we could plan around the events,” said Newton.