Almost 2 000 UK port workers at Felixstowe have downed tools, marking the start of an eight-day strike over a pay dispute and heightening fears of a major supply chain disruption across the country.
This comes after Trade Union Unite’s negotiations with the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company hit a deadlock after it offered a 7% wage increase, which the union found was unacceptable in light of the terminal’s high profits and dividends declared to shareholders in recent years. The increase is also below the real inflation rate of 11.8% and the workers feel that they had already been placed under strain after accepting a 1.4% below-inflation pay hike in 2021.
More than 1 900 members of the union, who are employed in manual roles at the docks, including crane drivers, tug boat operatives, and stevedores, walked off the job on Sunday, August 21, in the first strike to hit the port since 1989. It follows a raft of industrial action in the transport sector by the UK’s railway and London tube network workers last week, and is expected to run for eight days until August 28.
Unite has accused the company of prioritising profits and dividends instead of pay.
The union noted in a statement that the Felixstowe Dock company, its subsidiaries, and parent company based in Hong Kong, showed the company was ‘crying crocodile tears’ when it claimed it couldn’t afford to pay its dockers. Since 2017 the company has paid out £198 million in dividends, most of which have gone to parent companies, with the ultimate holding company being CK Hutchinson Holdings, which is registered in Hong Kong. Felixstowe’s accounts for 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, showed the company had made pre-tax profits of £61m, while also paying a dividend of £99m.
“Felixstowe Docks and its associated companies have been prioritising profits and dividends instead of giving their workers a decent share of the pie,” Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said.
“Instead, the company is siphoning off tens of millions of pounds offshore to its Hong Kong-based parent company almost every year. So Hong Kong shareholders are getting a bonanza payout while the company weeps ‘crocodile tears’, claiming that they can’t pay a decent pay rise here and essentially asking workers to accept a pay cut,” she said.
She added that the workers at Felixstowe had Unite’s full backing until this dispute was resolved.
