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30. The first gtaph shows a standard two shift operation with an increasing scale of cost for overtime and night work. The second shows approximately the Venezuelan cost pattern, with a high premium for work during the lunch period. The ship-owner, conscious in less formal terms of the situation presented in these graphs, and knowing the urgency to complete work on his ship, plans his work program accordingly. The decisions of one ship-owner may naturally have implications for the other ships waiting for a berth Jn the port. The ideal situation, at least for port users, would be one where work in all hours of the day bore the same cost, a sicuation achieved usually by a pattern of rotating shifts.

31. The restrictive practices that most affect labor and equipment productivity are those concerned with fixed gang size and gang allocation, with restrictions on output and with work sharing, all of which are aspects of work extending, together with some of the varied special practices. Fixed gang sizes arose probably as a mechanism encouraged by the employer, to ensure that sufficient labor was allocated to a hatch and that the work was done expeditiously and in such a way as to preserve the working unit. With the introduction of more specialized forms of cargo packaging, such as bulk grains and packaged timber, the fixed gang sizes became technically inappropriate but by that time established within the labor agreements and subject to change only through negotiation. The introduction of roll on/roll off (Ro/Ro) ships and car carriers provided a fresh challenge for traditional gang sizes and for established job rotation arrangements. With these vessels the need for labor may be highly peaked and, on account of their complicated internal ramps and lifts, is at the same time highly specialized. In addition these ships are more expensive to construct than conventional ships, so that their economic operation depends on fast and economic port handling. There have been years of negotiation in Peru between port labor, the labor regulatory body (which is controlled by the Navy), ENAPU as the port authority and user interests in an effort to create the labor environment that would permit the efficient operation of coastal Ro/Ro vessels for steel movements. A similar problem arose in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, in the handling of the Ro/Ro vessels from Miami, and was partially resolved by the agreement to pay port labor the standard shift payment, on condition that they did not involve themselves in the physical work of unloading/loading these vessels, thereby doubling the cost of the operation.

32. Spanish ports, following the recent institutional changes, have made a major effort to negotiate specific gang sizes for each different type of cargo, i.e to maintain the concept of a fixed gang size but to make it product specific (see Annex 3). This is in contrast to the approach which attempts to achieve flexibility in the determination of gang sizes.

33. Work sharing arrangements under which all men have an equal - opportunity of the best paying jobs normally the more specialized jobs - such as container handling or steel handling tend to act against high productivity, since these jobs are by definition those where a specialized work force is most necessary.