The Liverpool dockers' dispute began in September 1995 in the Mersey Docks and went on to become a key focal point of the class struggle world-wide. The dispute started when five dockworkers were fired by a firm linked to the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company (MDHC) in an overtime dispute provoked by their supervisors. Eighty of their co-workers responded by setting up a picket line to protest the dismissals. The dispute intensified when 400 dockers employed by the MDHC refused to cross the picket line and were fired en masse.
The MDHC was able to take advantage of Britain's Thatcherite labour laws designed to prohibit traditional forms of working class resistance such as secondary strikes. These labour laws made it possible for the MDHC to fire the dockers without any right of redress and to replace them with casual scab labour. These labour laws also went hand in hand with legislation pertaining to the dock industry enacted by the Thatcher government in 1989.
It was designed to privatize, de-regulate and de-unionize virtually all of Britain's ports. Liverpool became one of only two unionized ports in Britain as a result of these developments. The 1989 dock legislation also facilitated efforts to restructure both port operations and the composition of the workforces employed at them.
The restructuring of Britain's dock workforces was far-reaching and entirely predictable in the context of the changes taking place across the globe in the way work is organized. British port employers engaged in a concerted drive to employ workforces that would be fully utilized, low cost and available on a just-in-time or "as needed" basis. They wanted to employ only atomized workers who were isolated from each other, competed with each other for work and could be called to the docks on short notice at the employers' discretion to load or unload a ship that was still en route. In other words, the dock bosses most definitely did not want to continue to employ a full time, unionized and class conscious workforce that would pass their traditions and attitudes on to the next generation of dockers. A workforce like this is completely incompatible with the kind of workplaces the dock bosses desired.
Lean Production Enters the Docks
Significantly, the aims of employers like the MDHC are consistent with the aims of employers throughout the global transportation industry - to realize a workforce tailored to the use of just-in-time transportation systems where work has become increasingly individualized, closely monitored through the use of information technology and is tightly controlled. They wanted a workforce fully adapted to standardized work procedures.
Simply stated, the global transportation industry has been widely applying the principles of the lean system of production. This international trend explains why the dock bosses relentlessly sought to break down lines of demarcation between job classifications, create the most flexible work scheduling possible, and promote the use of "kaizen" or continuous improvement in their operations. It also explains why the dock bosses sought to replace industry-wide national dockworking agreements with separate agreements between individual employers and their respective workforces. Like bosses everywhere they fully understood that ending national, industry-wide agreements is critical to developing a lean workforce that identifies their interests with the well-being of their immediate employer and not with their fellow workers employed by other firms in the same industry. In other words, they realized that industry-wide agreements help to sustain working class consciousness.
These developments define the context for the current dispute. They explain why the dispute in Liverpool is focused squarely on the issue of atomized part-time or casual labour and why the struggle in Liverpool has struck a chord with dockers around the world. These developments also explain why the struggle in Liverpool is critically important to workers everywhere at this particular juncture in the development of capitalism in which the lean system has become the dominant system of production on a global scale.
A Perfect Pretext
Dockers everywhere face the threat of "casualisation", as the Liverpool dockers call it. It is widely understood that the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company saw the dockers' refusal to cross a picket line as the perfect pretext for hiring exactly the type of totally flexible, contingent workforce that is compatible with lean production and which they desired. Likewise, the dockworkers' refusal to cross a picket line provided the company with an opportunity to fire one of the last remaining full-time, unionized and deeply class conscious dock workforces in Britain. Effectively, it meant the Liverpool dock bosses could level the competitive playing field with Britain's non-union dock firms and run the Port of Liverpool as they pleased.
The MDHC started this dispute with a lot going for them. Britain's labour laws were loaded in their favour. These labour laws have allowed the company to operate with a scab workforce while legally prohibiting secondary strike action within Britain in support of the fired dockers. These laws have also insured that the leadership of the dockers' union, the Transport and General Workers (T&GWU), would distance themselves from the Liverpool dockers' struggle because the union could be sued for authorizing secondary strike action if it officially became involved. Furthermore, the MDHC undoubtedly knew that it could count both on a compliant British Trades Union Congress leadership to sit on the sidelines and on tacit support from the leadership of Britain's Labour Party. Labour Party leader Tony Blair has been steadfast in his determination to leave Thatcher's labour laws in tact, the trade unions be damned. Consequently, in September 1995, the fired Liverpool dockers found themselves locked in an unofficial dispute centred on the issue of casual labour in a country where viciously anti-union labour laws have all but crippled the labour movement.
Yet both the unofficial and illegal nature of this dispute and the universal resonance of the issues have proven to be sources of both the strength and resilience of the dockworkers' struggle. Specifically, the absence of official involvement by their union, the T&GWU, has made this an essentially self-managed struggle. It is directed by the dockers' shop stewards and is fully accountable to the decisions of weekly mass meetings involving the fired workers, the dockers wives and partners' support group (Women of the Waterfront) and, to a limited extent, their supporters. Furthermore, the fact that other British unions were not prepared to defy the law prohibiting secondary strike actions and the fact that the Mersey Docks have so many entrances that sustained mass picketing is not possible meant that the fired workers were compelled to look for support elsewhere. They quickly found it among dockers in other countries who have proven to be ready, willing and able to engage secondary actions because they identify so strongly with the struggle in Liverpool.
Consequently, within a month of the start of the dispute, the Maritime Union of Australia learned about the events in Liverpool on the internet. This was the first example of how the internet would be employed throughout this dispute with great effect and that it would directly facilitate the globalization of the dockworkers' struggle by allowing dockworkers from across the world to see the similarity of their respective struggles.
By February of 1996, Liverpool boats were being "blacked" or blacklisted and an all-out international effort to boycott the Port of Liverpool was starting to take shape. In addition, in the same month the fired dockworkers organized an international conference of dockworkers in Liverpool to formulate a coordinated strategy to around the casualisation issue. Further meetings were subsequently held in France and Liverpool. One observer noted that the dispute in Liverpool was becoming "a full scale international fighting campaign"(1). In addition to the conferences, this dynamic was fueled by seemingly endless trips overseas by the fired dockers and members of their wives and partners support group who both heightened the awareness of the workers they visited and their own about the similarity of their struggles.
Meanwhile, back in Britain, the leaders of the T&GWU fruitlessly tried to conduct negotiations with the MDHC without the involvement of the fired Liverpool dockers' shop stewards. Dockworkers elsewhere in Britain persisted in their hands-off stance, as did strategically important workers such as lorry drivers who routinely crossed the picket lines maintained by the fired workers. Nonetheless, public support continued to grow. Public meetings in support of the fired dockers were being held all over Britain. Millions of pounds were also being raised for them. Furthermore, autonomous support groups were being formed on a broad scale.
But one thing was especially notable about the dockers' strategy of globalizing their struggle. It was a timely response to a critical work reorganization issues linked to new technology (ie. casualization and containerization in shipping industry) that had encouraged employers to promote new work practices and demand greater flexibility. Significantly, British labour organizations had generally failed to address such issues and they had failed badly. Furthermore, this response arose from the base of Britain's labour movement and contrary to the wishes of its leadership.
International Day of Action
This brings us to the events during the week of January 20, 1997 when the globalization of this struggle really bore fruit. January 20 was designated as a day of international action in solidarity with the fired Liverpool dockworkers.
During the course of that day and the days that immediately followed it, dockworkers in no less than 27 countries and in 105 ports and cities around the
world staged solidarity actions, including illegal work stoppages. The actions were a stunning success. The Los Angeles Times, for example, reported at the time that the ports along the entire U.S. West Coast came to a standstill during the protests. (2)
In the wake of the stunning success of these actions, another conference followed in late May in Montreal that brought together dockworkers and their leaders from 17 countries and five continents. The discussion at this conference focused on privatization, deregulation and casualisation throughout industry on a global scale. One delegate remarked that, "all these port workers find themselves under similar industrial and political attacks as those faced by the Liverpool dockers twenty-one months ago." (3) It is noteworthy that the international body representing these workers, the International Transport Federation, declined to participate. It views the delegates gathered at such conferences as members of a "counterorganization".
Plans were also set for further international work stoppages. But what is truly significant is the simple fact that conferences like this show that the Liverpool dockers have given birth to an international dockers movement united in opposition to the capitalist restructuring of their industry.
By way of conclusion, it can be said that the success of Britain's dock bosses in applying features of the lean system of production to their operations and in terminating industry-wide labour organization in Britain's dock industry has, in a very profound sense, backfired. Their actions have, unintentionally, given birth to an embryonic, industry-wide organization of dockers on an international scale and raised the spectre of routine industrial action capable of sabotaging global just-in-time transportation systems, ie. the huge global transparks built in the U.S., Europe and Asia (more specifically in North Carolina, eastern Germany and Thailand). These bring together every means of transportation in one place so corporations can ship anything anywhere in the world within 48 hours.
It seems that the fired Liverpool dockers have directed the old Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times" at those who sought to dispense with them and at bosses everywhere for trying to subject workers to the rigors of lean-inspired transportation systems.
Postscript: Two final things should be noted. One is that just last week South African dockers represented by South Africa's T&GWU announced that they will block the export of citrus fruit destined for the British port of Sheerness which is wholly owned by the MDHC. Fresh produce accounts for over one third of the activity at Sheerness. The other is that one of the remaining ship lines still using the Port of Liverpool is owned by Canadian Pacific. The fired dockers believe that if Canadian Pacific's shipping line stopped using the Port of Liverpool, their dispute could swiftly be brought to a satisfactory conclusion.
- Bruce Allen August 23, 1997
Footnotes
(1) Dave Graham, "Liverpool Dockers' Strike March 8, 1996", Collective Action Notes No. 11/12, p. 14.
(2) Liverpool Dock Shop Stewards Committee, The Balance Sheet, p. 1.
(3) Liverpool Dock Shop Stewards Committee, "Common Goal!", Dockers Charter No. 16 June 1997, p. 2.
