Ferdinand Ritter Suykens The Transformation of the Seaport of Antwerp

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1 Ferdinand Ritter Suykens The Transformation of the Seaport of Antwerp Although the city of Antwerp was never a member of the Hanseatic League, the nicest painting of the Hanseatic House in Antwerp hangs in the Town hall of Bremen. The Hanseatic tradition of Port Management is also today very strong in the Municipality of Antwerp. It has been said that one needs the vocation of a martyr if one wants to loosen the ties between the city and its port. Although the relationship between the port and the city remains very strong and Antwerp remains basically a municipal port there have in recent years been quite a few changes. When I started to work at the port, it was a part of the municipal administration. The city owned the port infrastructure, the entire port area and also a large proportion of the equipment (cranes, sheds etc ). There port was situated entirely within municipal territory. Whenever its boundaries were extended, the limits of the municipality were adjusted to include the projected extension. In 1956, for example, an urgent national investment programme was voted in parliament (law of 5 th July 1996). As a consequence the City was authorised to extend the territory from ha to ha (granted on 15 the April 1958). The River Scheldt is the public domain of the Belgian state (as indicated in the 'code Napoleon' which to a great extent is still valid in civil law). As a consequence, in the port complex, only the quays along the river (some 5 km) are the property of the State; however they were given in concession to the city which has equipped them as required. By a convention passed between the State and the city of Antwerp between 18 January 1874 and 8 May 1895, a convention adapted on 30 January the control of the quays on the Scheldt was to be entrusted to the city of Antwerp. For the new port area on the left bank of the Scheldt, the law of 20 June 1978 prescribed that the management of the port should be entrusted to the city of Antwerp, not withstanding the fact that the installations are found on the territory of another local government authority (municipality and province). The development of the industrial zone of the new port will be promoted by a newly established inter-municipal development company in which the city of Antwerp as well as other authorities on the left bank has a stake. 67

2 The management of the port by the city was entirely based on the national laws on the administration of the Belgian municipalities. The highest municipal authority is, then, the Municipal Council. This, in Antwerp, comprises 55 members elected democratically for a period of six years. The Burgomaster is nominated by the King on the recommendation of the Council. The number of municipal councillors is determined by law and depends on the number of inhabitants. The exercise of the municipal council's powers are under the ultimate control of the provincial administration and of the King. Also certain resolutions of the Municipal Council, such as the regulations dealing with port development and policing have to be ratified by the provincial council and, in certain cases, by the King. The daily administration of the city and the port was in the hands of the Board of Burgomaster and Aldermen, elected by the City Council. In common agreement the members of the Board of Burgomaster and Aldermen decided on the division of the functions. The Alderman of the Port was especially charged with port affairs. The Board of Burgomaster and Aldermen which had permanent procuration, executed the decisions of the city council and therefore disposed of various civil bodies standing under the direction of the Town Clerk. The payments and receipts of the city are handled by the Municipal Collector who is directly responsible to the Board of Burgomaster and Aldermen. The municipal services which are directly involved in the administration and management of the port were grouped in the 'Port Administration' (havenbedrijf). The head of this body was the General Manager of the Port, who took care of the general administration and co-ordination of the port services and who represented the Port Administration in all relations with the port users and public bodies. On behalf of the port administration, he gave advice and made propositions to the Board of Burgomaster and Aldermen on harbour matters. He stayed of course in close contact with the Alderman of the Port. The 'port administration' included several services for the operation, extension and maintenance of the port installation. 68

3 I. The port now changes Although already in 1932 a separate account was introduced for port matters within the global municipal account, there were no special powers for the port department or its civil servants. It lasted until the beginning of the '70 s when a new municipal enterprise was formed (regie) which had a separate budget for ordinary receipts and expenses. Only the end results appeared in the municipal budget and accounts. This gave a certain freedom to the port services and made them sense the necessity of balancing the finances. It had no legal independence from the city of which it was a department. The extraordinary budget, investments, loans, land leases, public tenders for harbour works etc remained the responsibility of the Board of Burgomaster and Aldermen, the municipal council etc After the election of 1995 when it become difficult to form a new coalition on the municipal level it was agreed that a "autonomous municipal port enterprise" (Autonoom Gemeenlyk havenbedrijf) had to be established. This needed a parliamentary initiative and was new in the country. The major elements were : all the shares belong to the municipality, the majority of the Board members are members of the municipal council. No representatives of Companies having a direct interest in the port can sit on the Board, all land and debts of the municipality incurred for the port were transferred to the new autonomous enterprise et all investments, loans and concessions etc were in the competence of the autonomous enterprise. Very important was the fact that the port could employ personnel that did not have the statute of civil servants and could be paid a different salary. The existing personnel was given the choice between remaining civil servants with a municipal pension and municipal wage cap or becoming port authority personnel with (a little bit higher) port authority - i.e. "private" wages and normal employment contracts. The autonomous authority can invest in port activities or take part in such companies. (which, of course, gives it a chance of getting involved in private investments but could take the neutrality of the port authority away). 69

4 The law of March 1999 on port management of seaports in the Flemish region extended this change to the whole Flemish region. Since devolution in Belgium, port matters are the competence of the region. There were however quite some difficulties between the different municipal Seaports Antwerp, Gent and Ostend on the one side and Zeebrugge (MBZ) which was a para-state company on the other side. The Antwerp experience with the Autonomous Municipal Port Authority was quite a success. On the European Level a harmonisation of port management mainly as far as the financial relations with the state became a necessity (state aid). There was also quite some jealousy between the Flemish ports who believed that Zeebrugge which had on its Board, the most powerful civil servants of the State was being favoured financially, that Gent received substantial amounts from the municipality to cover its deficits and that Antwerp had to carry a heavy burden for pensions of port personnel etc A private bill was therefore proposed by some members of the Flemish Parliament which included representatives of the regions which had ports as well as members of the two major political parties (Christian Democrats and Socialist). According to this law, Port Authorities are Authorities of Public Law. They only can have port management functions in the port area which are described. Port infrastructure includes : basic infrastructure: sea locks, Port jetties and also quay walls which are not used for transhipment of cargoes, zones for pipelines, railroads, green and buffer zones, roads to and from the port, canal docks etc port internal basic infrastructure: i.e. docks, water surfaces, raising of land, dredging. equipment infrastructure: meaning infrastructure for loading and unloading e.g. quay walls, roll on /roll off ramps, surfaces of quay area, internal roads in the port, superstructure: sheds warehouses etc Maritime Access i.e. the basic infrastructure remains the responsibility of the Flemish region. For port internal basic infrastructure, and equipment infrastructure the Flemish Regional Government can within the limits of its budget give 70

5 certain subsidies. Cost benefit analyses studies on the environment, on mobility and regional planning have to be provided. The Flemish Government can ask that the subsidies are reimbursed when the actual results differ from those given in the above named studies. A full time Commissioner of the Flemish Government can he present at all the meetings of the Board and can appeal to the Flemish Government on a number of subjects. There has to be a concertation council at each port between Port Authority, employers and employees. There can be a local concertation council at each port, with the municipalities bordering the ports to study the impact of port activities on the environment, mobility, the well being of the housing zones. As all the ports will be municipal autonomous ports, the State will transfer its 68% majority of the shares in the company which manages the port of Zeebrugge to the municipality of Bruges for one Euro. The law exists but a lot of details have still to be worked out and it is expected that it will enter into force on January 1 st As they say in Germany "Der teufel steckt im detail". It should not be forgotten that in the port over the years, the port equipment (cranes, sheds, warehouses) had become the responsibility of the private sector. The port of Antwerp changed from a tool port into a land-lord port. This needed investments from the cargo handling enterprises who still today are competing (too) strongly with each other. There are 3 major container handling firms, 2 fruit terminals, 3 forest products terminals etc only for the handling of dry bulk is there a concentration of all the terminals in all the Belgians ports as well as Dunkirk in France in one group of interests. II. The private sector's functions. The loading and unloading of sea-going ships and other vessels together with the handling of goods is the domain of the private sector. The intervention of municipal services occurs only in providing a minor part of the equipment and the personnel required for efficient operation of the equipment which is property of the city. The organisation of work within the port of Antwerp must be considered against this background. A law passed on 8 January 1972 stipulated that port work only should be carried out by recognised dockworkers. This law, together with the Royal decrees, defined the terms 'recognised dockworker', 'port-zone', 'port work', etc All the port workers are recognised by 71

6 the National Committee of the Port of Antwerp, an official body in which the most representative organisations of employers and workers are equally represented. The same National Committee decides on the conditions of work. It also maintains a code of working practices, reviewed regularly; this forms a sort of bible for dockworkers. This National Committee maintains a permanent bureau which ensures that these conditions of work are strictly followed. It seeks to reach an amicable agreement for any dispute about the code. All the decisions of the permanent bureau commit the parties but are only valid for a specific case on board of a particular ship. In principle, the dockers are employed on a daily basis, except executive personnel and foremen employed exclusively by one employer. This does not mean that all workers are employed each day by a different employer. In fact, several port companies regularly reemploy the same dockers who, in practice, work exclusively for these firms. In theory, however, it can be considered as a daily employment system. The dockers who have not been re-employed by their employers must register each day in the local labour exchange at a specified time. In the course these sessions there takes place, in the first ten minutes, the system of 'free employment' which means that the employer or his representative (foreman) freely chooses his workers and vice-versa. When the system has not provided a sufficient number of workers, the National Employment Office obtains the required number of workers. The port workers who are not taken on are given unemployment benefits by the National Employment Office and, in addition, some signing-on expenses by the 'Fonds de Sécurité d'existence' of the port of Antwerp. The total amount of these two benefits - that is the principal daily unemployment pay and the signing on expenses- come to 70% of the average worker's salary. When, at the end of a shift, a worker is re-engaged by his employer for another shift (minimum 10 to 16 hours later), he does not have to go to the local labour exchange. Before concluding this brief summary on the organisation of work in the port of Antwerp, it should be mentioned that the number of dockers has fallen considerably over the last few years largely as a result of the considerable increase in productivity. Despite the fact that the total traffic of the port has more than trebled during the past decades, the number of registered dockers has fallen from in 1960 to in 1975 and to around at present. 72

7 A major problem at present is that logistical companies leave the port as dockworkers even after a lower salary was agreed for "warehouse workers" are too expensive. We were always afraid that the Antwerp dock workers regime with its closed shop elements might be contrary to the freedom of work articles of the European Treaties. We were given to understand that the advocate general of the European Court has advised that the 'Merci concentionale' Genoa was different and that the Belgian system is acceptable. 73