UNIONS' BLACK RECORD

'You worry me. You're like some of my so-called militants. They're scared of the employers. I'm not scared. My job is to deteat the employers' Tim O'Leary, national docks secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, to a Workers Press reporter.

The dockers' fight is not unique. They are facing what every other worker in Britain has been facing over the last five years—a massive cut-back in the labour force and a drive for higher and higher productivity.

It has been going on in the shipyards, the car industry, the railways and the mines.

But there is one factor that gives the dockers' struggle its particular bitterness and special form - the National Dock Labour Scheme.

The Scheme was introduced in 1947 by the Labour government. It gave portworkers a legal guarantee of security of employment by setting up a register of men and forbidding the employment of men not on this register. It also ensured that a docker received certain regular payments whether there was work for him or not.

The Scheme was administered by the National Dock Labour Board, jointly controlled by the unions and port employers. After Devlin the Scheme stayed, but the men were allocated to particular employers. Any surplus went "temporary' unattached register where they got minimum fall-back pay each week.

The Scheme is not just a buffer against unemployment. Without it the dockers would not be the powerful fighting force they are today-it is the sheet-anchor of all their rights and conditions.

Its most important effect is to deprit: he employers of their righ. : hire and fire. On the doc.:. employers cannot inreaten dire. and mass unemployment to unco-operative labour force.

This partly accounts for the dockers' characteristic strength and independence - from the employers and union bureaucracy.

It also means that the port bosses have had to pay a high price for a smaller and vastly more productive labour force. The size of the severance bribe to get men out of the industry is not due to the employers love of their labour force, but because the Scheme prevents them from forcing the men out.

Therefore, the scheme cannot be viewed as some legal regulation peculiar to dockland. It is a most important basic right won by dockersand one that should be extended to cover the whole of the working class.

EROSION

For this reason employers hate the scheme and have always conspired to get rid of it. This became an urgent necessity when they were forced to modernize and begin containerization. The container revolution meant massive investment in new ships, berths, cargo handling equipment, containers, lorries and so on. Normally such a move would have been accompanied by a productivity scheme aimed at tricking the labour force into accepting big redundancies similar to the Measured-Day To an extent this has happened on the docks. Devlin and successive severance schemes have slashed the labour force from 60,000 in 1967 (the year of Phase I) to 40,000 today. Containerization has been accepted and on many modern berths manning levels are considerably reduced. This was the kind of 'slow erosion' of the scheme that the employers wanted. But they came unstuck.

Eventually dockers realized that their rights and conditions were being pared away to nothing and they called a halt to the dangerous process. This is the background to the Jones-Aldington report.

plans back on the rails.

on full pay will be subsidizing the 'unemployed' men.

around this latest impasse, they hope to drive forward and reduce the labour force by and denuded that the fight for basic rights will be abandoned.

The Jones-Aldington episode, however, does highlight another feature of dockland struggles - the continual cooperation of union officials and employers.

It is rather sickening to hear Transport and General Workers' Union leaders talking about the 'great human problem' caused by modernization. We heard none of this wailing back in the 1960s when the employers were launching their attack - then, we were told, make every docker's str major role in bringing in c date marks the first desper rush into containers by big British and European sh ping lines. This scramble accompanied by intense li bying, by employers, of un officials and the Labour g ernment. Of course it was era of Harold Wilson's 'whi hot, technological revolutic so all the big talk about 'revolution' in sea transpi sounded very impressive to feeble reformists in the Labr government.

One of George Brown's fi jobs was to set up a natio onafeour on sus. 'ate Lipwas obion oviteon', ort our ruld development committee reet exports. In September 1965 it lote produced its report. A revealrict ing passage noted the development of containers and roll-on, roll-off services and recomAmended: 'From the concept of through-transport has stemmed The idea ot Inland Containe epots (ICDs) where full load can be broken down . . . and delivered ••• away, but not necessarily far away, from the congested port area. .. if groupage systems could be further developed there might be a significant reduction in the transit time for this type of load. An increase in the number of ICDs should make it easier to extend groupage' This was probably the first time the container depots had received official recognition and encouragement in Britain. A member of this committee was none other than Tim O'Leary, the T&GWU's national docks secretary. Yet the report no where mentioned the problems for dock labour, which would result from the growth of ICDs.

During the next two years the Labour government introduced successive legislation to waste of time; the judges came almost exclusively on the side of the employers.

When the container revolution in Britain was well under way, the employers, with great delicacy, began work for a tree hand with the towards long-desired labour force and the abolition of the scheme ctober September and 1970, soon after the introduction of Devlin Phase II, they began talks with Jack Jones, T&GWU secretary and Tim ranging, but one of the key topics was the eventual abolition of the National Dock The thinking of the shippers was summarized in a memorandum sent the Tory Minister of Transport John Peyton, by Sir John Nicholson head of Ocean Steamship Co. On for dock abour she ultimate aim should be the substitution of normal industrial agreements and relations for the present statutory regulation of the industry (the circumstances of 1947 no longer apply). This does not preclude work. people's participation in the process which govern the running of dock labour affairs but such participation be the consequence of agreement between employers and union and would be were the views that ine. the big shippers put to Jones and O'Leary when they them in servet at the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, on October 1, 1970.

An employers' memo on this discussion made these points on dock labour and its status:

'We wholly shared Jones' earlier view that until Devlin Il bedded down it could be disastrous talk publicly about any change in the existing structure 'As previously explained, we must look forward to the changes which would match the alterations in the pattern and form of employment and to that end statutory oblig ations must disappear at some stalater the president of the Sir ton Nicholson. Association, then head of the Ocean Steamship Company. the Tory Minister Peytor and reported on the discussion with Jones and O'Leary. A memo on this meeting made these points:

explaining [to Peyton] that f took the opportunity had made it my business to as was a was apparently not hostile ascertain that Jack Jones our conception of the NPC Ports Councill desp, ? his understandable and doctrinaire preference for nationalization; b) would be prepared, at the i time, to discuss our ideas prate Now the same men who failed to safeguard their members during the container revolution are helping the em- ployers over fully last major hurdle. If developed, modernization on the docks could mean a labour force of 5,000.

Such a denuded force could a revision of the pressure for a revision of the The dockers would be in their most vulnerable state since the 19th century. This is the meaning of the Jones-Aldington plot. Any compromise must, therefore, be entirely rejected.

Those who argue that 'copper-bottomed guarantees' would solve the issue are also misleading the dockers.

Suppose all the containerbase jobs went to the dockers, suppose all the ports were registered and suppose the temporary unemployed register (TUR) was abolished? Would it solve the crisis onl the docks? The answer is no Modernization in the hand: of private employers means a vastly-reduced labour force— at the port, in road transport and warehousing To reduce the struggle to one over a handful of jobs is to give the employers maximum advantage. They can then turn round and declare that them, that it is for squabble the affair is nothing to do with between workers an inevitably declining pool of employment.

The inescapable conclusion from the evidence containerization is that there is no solution to the dockers' problem outside nationalization of the entire port transport and shipping industry This cannot be passed off once more as some long-term dream. Another 'deal' will be a disaster. whatever the guarantees 'copperottomed or otherwise.

There is only one way to go forward-with the political policy of nationalization, without compensation under workers' control. This means that the No. task on the agenda is to remove the Tory government and put Labour back to carry out this job.

As we said at the start of this article the dockers' plight is not unique. All workers are in this situation.

The employing class faces economic crisis and harsh international competition. Nowhere are these problems more severe than in the very sinews of the capitalist system— international trade and transport. To survive this crisis, the employers must make the working class pay in unemploy menT eventual earnings.

The dockers are now in the vanguard. They must not be left isolated. All workers and unions must rally round this strike with industrial action and make the dockers' struggle the fatal blow that will force the Tory government out of office.