Gréve de la Faim...Hunger Strike

The below article was sent to you from Andrew Spurrier
(andrew.spurrier@wanadoo.fr) with the following message: Bonjour. Voici
l'article que j'ai fait sur votre greve de la faim pour Lloyd's List hier.
Meilleures salutations, Andrew Spurrier
SNRH tug officers launch hunger strike


By Andrew Spurrier in Paris Thursday 6 December 2007 TWO tug officers
employed by port of Le Havre towage operator SNRH today began a hunger strike to
protest over disciplinary action which they say the company is preparing to take
against them.

The two, who are both union delegates, face being laid off
for up to two months without pay for alleged failure to observe internal
procedures, notably concerning records of their working hours.

The two,
chief engineer Alain Bourgeois and a tugmaster who did not want to be
identified, claim that their hunger strike is the culmination of a long battle
with SNRH to oblige it to respect a collective agreement governing the
organisation of work aboard tugs.

SNRH has already tried to sack Mr.
Bourgeois but his dismissal has been blocked for the moment by the French
employment inspectorate.

The two hunger strikers say that the company is
trying to get rid of them so as to be able to negotiate a series of “atypical”
agreements with seafarers, enabling it to reduce crew numbers aboard its vessels
from four to three and maintain crew aboard for longer periods on
stand-by.

SNRH counters, however, that the two are trying to have
applied aboard its vessels a collective agreement to which it is not a party and
to which it has always been opposed.

Chairman and chief executive Dorus
Knegtel said that the position of the two was not supported by the majority of
the company’s seafarers.

“They are the only ones not in conformity with
procedures on board and the way we work,” he said. “That is their right but then
they should find another company.”

He added that the company was not
anti-union but would only talk to unions which took into account “the
possibilities and impossibilities” with which it was faced.

“Ninety nine
per cent of our people on board are satisfied with that,” he said.

SNRH,
which is controlled by Dutch towage operator, Kotug, has been operating at Le
Havre for a little over a year alongside established operator Les
Abeilles.

It won authorisation to start work at the French port after a
marathon seven-year battle with the French authorities who were concerned that
its arrival would provoke industrial action among by other tug crews.