Port Workers End 3-day Strike

Government back-to-work orders carrying severe penalties for non-compliance succeeded in ending a three day strike by 4500 port workers at Haifa, Ashdod and Eilat this evening. But while the docks were active tonight, it was still unknown whether the end of the strike will end the pile-up of more than two million cases of citrus fruit and other cargoes that has cost the government millions of Pounds.

The dockworkers, who faced prison terms of up to two years and fines of up to IL 24,000 if they failed to report for work, may still institute a rule-book slow-down. In that case, the back-log of unloaded cargo would not be reduced but would grow larger day by day. Observers said it would not be clear whether the longshoremen intend to work at their regular pace or “by the book” until the day shift reports tomorrow morning.

The decision to issue back-to-work orders on the governmental level was made today at an emergency meeting of the ministerial economic committee with Premier Yitzhak Rabin at his Tel Aviv office. It came after the strikers defied back-to-work orders issued yesterday by labor courts in Haifa and Beersheba. The government rejected proposals to use the army to load ships and also refused to give in to the strikers’ wage demands although economists estimated that it would be cheaper to do so than to have the strike continue.

The government also wanted to avoid a possible violent clash between the dockworkers and laid-off citrus pickers, About 33,000 pickers were thrown out of work when the Citrus Marketing Board suspended harvesting to prevent the spoilage of fruit on the docks. The port workers reportedly have not given up their demands for an IL 600 a month wage increase above the wage agreements they signed only five months ago.