Strike support march shuts down MTL
Aug 12 2009 09:43
SIPTU members at the MTL depot in Dublin Port have been on strike since the beginning of July, resisting forced redundancies and pay cuts. The company shipped in scabs from the North and Britain on day one to steal the dockers’ jobs, and also got a High Court injunction preventing effective picketing. The Port Workers Support Group (local trade union & community activists, including the Workers Solidarity Movement) held its second march of solidarity today (Monday August 10th). Joe King reports:
“About 150 of us, including many of the Thomas Cooke workers who came with their union banner, gathered outside the school on East Wall Road. There were strikers’ families and neighbours, and supporters from further afield. Another 100 marched from Ringsend, and we met up at the East Link bridge. We then marched to the MTL depot and not a single truck got in or out for the hour and a half of our protest.....
It was good that some of the speakers rejected attempts by Sinn Fein to nationalise the strike in terms of pining the blame on the brits