What Next for Britain’s Portworkers?

OLDER men on the docks remember the thirties very well. The humiliation of the stands. The ‘muscle feeling’. The scramble for a job.

They remember the ‘blue eyes’ system—the whisper of ‘You're staying behind’ into the ear of the favoured ones, The militant was isolated. The man who refused to overload a sling on the last ship was left standing.

For the employers those were the good old days. In that peculiar phraseology the employers like to use, they were the days of a ‘better employer-employee relationship’ than has existed since the end of the second world war.

Organised resistance to employers They were also days to which the docker is determined never to return.

But unless his determination is expressed in organized resistance to the employers’ plans, the docker will be flung back into the conditions of the hungry thirties.

‘To ensure greater regularity of employment’ is one of the stated aims of the Dock Labour Scheme.

Today regularity of employment js the exception for the majority of dockers. The number of men without work is higher than at any time for six years.

Already the shortage of work has sharply reduced the living standards of a great number of dockers.

Ever since the end of the war most dockers have worked regular overtime. Because of the failure of trade union leaders to carry forward the fight to raise basic pay. the standards of these portworkers have become dependent on a week of fifty-two hours, plus occasional Saturday and Sunday work.

Now that overtime is not so readily available the docker —Particularly in ports where piece-work earnings are low— is beginning to realize more clearly just how inadequate is his basic pay.

Three paltry half-crowns At the recent inquiry into dockers’ wages, trade union spokesmen declared that the docker needed 35s. a week to bring his real wages up to what they were at the end of the war. Since that time the cost of living has gone up by 84 Per cent., but wages have risen by only 55 per cent.

Dockers were given a 7s. 6d. increase after that inquiry— 7s. 4d. after a deduction of twopence which is being put into a fund for purposes yet unspecified.

These three paltry half-crowns have already rolled away in increases in rents, coal, fares and food since the award was hastily dgreed to by the trade union leaders.

The docker signing on is near the starvation line. Many dockers now live on new housing estates miles away from the dock. Their rents are higher, and fares eat a large slice out of their fall-back or attendance money.

Two calls a day mean dreary, wasted hours waiting on the dock road, with money spent on snacks and cups of tea.

Today a docker with four children who goes home at the end of the week with his basic wage has less in his pocket than he would receive from national assistance.

Yet national assistance scales are based on what are considered to be the absolute minimum nutritional needs.

Want to end militancy With fewer men in the Scheme, tonnage handled has gone up by 44 per cent. since 1945. The extra productivity, however, has not meant steadily better conditions for the docker.

On the contrary, now that the Scheme has produced a ‘surplus’ of labour, the employers are seeking to use it in an attempt to increase their power over the men on the docks and drive all trace of militancy out of dockland.

The employers have as one of their aims the break-up of the Dock Labour Scheme. In 1955 they proposed to the Devlin inquiry that the ‘principle of joint contro! of the Scheme, by employers and unions, should be replaced by control of an organization of representatives of the employers alone’.

In the recent Tooley Street ‘black meat’ strike it was only the commendable spirit of the men in the ranks Which prevented a break through the scheme.

The employers flooded in non-registered labour in an attempt to smash the men’s stand for trade union principle.

Trade union officials shamefully gave assistance to the employers when they signed the infamous ‘perishable goods’ agreement.

That agreement, if operated, would make strikes against even the worst conditions impossible—if dockers were hardling cargo that in any way could be termed ‘perishable’-— or else it would allow the employer free use of non-registered labour to break the strike.

Like others of their class the port employers have been itching for a show-down which would smash organized militancy once and for all.

Before the last wage increase was granted they were preparing for a bitter struggle. Some of them were enraged that the Cameron report should award even as little as 7s. 6d.

Warning about fighting abilities But big business and the Tory government had been given a salutary lesson by the busmen, and by the Tooley Street and other London dockers. They had been given a warning about the fighting abilities that can be roused in the working So the show-down on the docks did not take place, although it was reported that preparations had reached the stage of the authorities’ taking over Harringay Arena in London as a distribution centre and training certain army units for work on the docks.