By James Vassilopoulos
From Los Angeles to Fremantle, Copenhagen to Durban, actions in solidarity with sacked Liverpool dockers were held on September 8. September is the second anniversary of the dockers' struggle to keep their jobs.
The action was most powerfully supported in ports in Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, South Africa and on the US west coast, where workers struck for 8-24 hours.
The call for an international day of action came from the Montreal international dockers' conference in May. This was the second such day of action, the first one occurring on January 20 at 105 ports in 27 countries.
The latest action took various forms, from 24-hour stoppages like that at Gothenburg in Sweden, to stop-work meetings and showings of Ken Loach's documentary, The Flickering Flame.
In Sweden, all ports organised by the Swedish Dockworkers Union stopped the containers of ACL and CAST, companies that still use the Liverpool docks, for 24 hours. Ongoing actions are to follow.
After listening to speeches from Liverpool dockers and Women of the Waterfront, workers at the port of Copenhagen walked off the job. In Amsterdam, all day stop-work meetings were held. These dockers say they supported the English workers because they too are facing privatisation, job losses and casualisation.
In Australia, all major ports stopped for five hours. P&O ports took a complaint to the Industrial Relations Commission.
There was an eight-hour shutdown an all ports on the US coast from San Diego, California, to Dutch Harbour, Alaska. In San Francisco, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union rallied outside the British consulate to demand that the Blair government re-hire the fired workers. They were joined by striking Bay Area Rapid Transport workers.
In South Africa a national port day of action was held demanding a national dock labour scheme and supporting the struggles in Liverpool and in Western Australia against the "third wave" of industrial legislation. A mass rally was held in Durban.
The South African dock workers are boycotting all trade involving the Mersey Dock and Harbour Company.
Other actions were held in Spain, Portugal, New Zealand, India, Japan, France, Canada and, for the first time, Ireland.
Some unions closely aligned to the International Transport Federation chose to do nothing.
A rally in Liverpool was held on September 27 with the theme "Two years on ... time to win it!". As well, a conference has been proposed by Spanish unions to plan a Europe-wide campaign.
Because many union leaders in England, including their own Transport and General Workers Union, are not supporting the dockers, they have been forced to concentrate on international support.
PM Tony Blair's Labour government is one the biggest shareholders in the Merseyside Dock and Harbour Company, which sacked the Liverpool dockers. So far, however, Labour has refused to intervene to reinstate the workers and repeal the Tory anti-union laws.