LIVERPOOL DOCK STRIKE
1959The NewsletterWilliam Hunter Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Four hundred Liverpool dockers—all the men available for work in No. 8 control—stopped work Jast Saturday morning, According to many dockers this was the first time since 1945 that the men in this area had been 100 per cent united in struggle.
They struck in protest against an action of Scruttons ‘id., which the men declared was in breach of the Dock Labour Scheme.
The firm had employed men on night shift on one ship, finishing Saturday morning. It then ordered them to work Sunday on another ship, although there were dockers in the control available for work.
In accordance with the Dock Labour Scheme. the firm should have given these men their books, and then applied for labour in the hiring ‘ pen.’
At a meeting of the men on the following Monday, officials of the Transport and General Workers’ Union denied the truth of a statement alleged to have been made by the firm that they had been given permission by the union.
The dockers decided to return to work after assurances from P. J. O’Hare—district secretary of the TGWU—that the procedure adopted by Scruttons would not be allowed again.
But, so far, there has been no indication that union officials intend to press for disciplinary action against the firm although there is a clause in the Dock Labour Scheme which provides for the punishment of employers who fail to carry out the ‘provisions of the Scheme,’ and up and down the line of Mersey docks, dockers are continually being disciplined for the most trifling offences.
By our Industrial Correspondent