It’s clearly strike season at UK’s ports.
Following swiftly after a strike that crippled the Port of Felixstowe late last month, the first strike action at the UK’s largest port since 1989, comes news that more than 560 port operatives and maintenance engineers at the Port of Liverpool will down tools from September 19 to October 3 over a 7% pay offer.
With the real rate of inflation at 12.3% and rising, they say this is effectively a pay cut.
They have hit out at billionaire-owned port operator MDHC which they claim made £30 million in profits in 2021.
Workers will also strike over MDHC’s failure to honour a 2021 pay agreement. This includes the company not undertaking a promised pay review, which last happened in 1995, and failing to deliver on an agreement to improve shift rotas.
“MDHC is controlled by a tax-exiled billionaire and can well afford to pay these workers a proper pay rise,” said trade union Unite general secretary Sharon Graham.
“Workers across the country are sick to death of being told to take a hit on their wages and living standards while employer after employer is guilty of rampant profiteering. MDHC needs to think again, table a reasonable offer, and fulfil its previous pay promises.”
The company is owned by the Peel Group – based in the Isle of Man tax haven.
The group’s majority owner is UK tycoon John Whittaker, who is worth more than £1.4 billion and is also based in the Isle of Man. The Australian investment fund, Australian Super, is the group’s second-largest investor.
The strike action is expected to severely disrupt both shipping and road transport in Liverpool and the surrounding areas.
Workers have threatened that more strikes will be scheduled in coming weeks if MDHC fails to put forward an acceptable offer.
Unite lead officer for freeports, Steven Gerrard, said MDHC had refused to honour the previous pay pledges it had made to trade union members and was refusing to put forward an acceptable pay rise now. “It has no one else to blame for the disruption that will be caused.
“It needs to deliver on the agreements it made in 2021 as well as tabling an offer our members can accept for 2022.”
