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58. The introduction of bulk and container cargo handling methods has changed the situation. Restrictive practices are no longer aimed primarily at making acceptable the demands of dock work. They are used now much<sup>more</sup> to protect employment in the face of the sut3tantial productivity increases made possible by the new methods. The cost of restrictive practices<sup>has</sup> increased sharply on account of the higher costs of specialized berths and ships. Thete is now a strong economic pressure to achieve greater flexibility in working practice by the removal of the restrictive practices. Associated with this greater flexibility is an inescapable decline in employment.

59. The changes in technology associated with bulk handling and containetization have led to major changes in the organization of work, the organization of labor and in the employer organization. Work previously divided by ship work, quay work and shed work is now organized on a terminal basis. This has facilitated the entry of the private sector into areas traditionally the responsibility of the port authority and has been the incentive for major policy changes on the part of government. Labor, previously organized in a general pool, is now required to be more specialized with a strong trend towards its allocation to individual employers. The traditional pattern of numerous port employers with minimal capital investment, whose main business was to hire labor from the pool as required, is giving way with the emergence of larger and financially more solid groupings, capable of investing in equipment and possibiy installations and of offering permanent employment to their workforce.

60. Given the worldwide spread of containerized and bulk transport, no country can afford the luxury of continuing with traditional **por** labor arrangements and their associated restrictive ptactices. The cost of their abolition is a major reorganization of the port industry of the country, the payment of substantial sums in compensation and the risk of industrial stoppages, but this cost must be faced if the development of exports and imports is not to be constrained by port inefficiency. The figures available from Australia and elsewhere show that the investment in compensation has a high rate of return, when analyzed in purely financial terms and a very high rate of return, when analyzed in economic terms.

# Approaches to Change

61. Changes in restrictive practices have to be made in step with changes in the organization of work. A piecemeal or gradualist approach is unlikely to be able to respond sufficiently quickly to the needs of a changing technology. Typically successful change has come from industrywide changes. affecting all aspects of work, and a reconsideration of the role of public and private sectors. Privatization usually implies some transfer of responsibility from one union or working group to another and in this process offers the possibility of reform of working practices. Changes themselves have varied according to circumstances but share the characteristics or major changes in labor agreements and in labor organization, a substantial reduction in the labor force and eubstantial compensation payments.