Terminal staff show up en masse on Workers’ Day

RAY SMUTS
IT WAS an historic Worker’s Day at the Cape Town Container Terminal this month as workers turned up en masse for the first time in a decade.
It has been tradition to celebrate Worker’s Day (May 1) as a public holiday, but due to it falling on a Sunday this year, it rolled over to the following day.
Sapo container terminal planning manager in Cape Town, David Davids, said the decision to work on this day came after successful negotiations with the unions on the issue. What is more, no absenteeism was reported among the operations staff.
Unfortunately, weekend bunching of vessels again reared its ugly head and an intermittently howling south-easter complicated matters even further, but Davids says this did not halt operations, although the number of moves per crane hour dropped to around 13.