By a Liverpool docker
The strike of the dockers in Liverpool, working for Peel Ports, achieved a wage rise that is above inflation and it is a measure of the economic power that workers still have when they choose to use it. The pay rises they have won amount to between 14 and 18 per cent, depending on the skill set and experience of the particular workers.
At a mass meeting held at the docks on November 10, around 600 workers voted overwhelmingly in favour of the deal, and the dock workers were able to resume normal work. But the ‘normal’ work on the docks is another story and perhaps gives some indication of the reason for the stubbornness and the militancy of the dockers in their fight for a decent wage rise. The work is hard, unrelenting and physically demanding in a way that few jobs are, and it blows a hole in any ‘work-life’ balance the dockers might try to have.
The following are some of the comments a Liverpool docker gave to Left Horizons about the character of the work at Peel Ports:
The shifts at Liverpool docks are punishing. If you start at 7am, you have to get up at 4-5am every day, to start work. It is a 12-hour shift, finishing at 7pm. Then it’s home, strip, wash and sit down to eat and then it’s bed and back to work the next day. Workers have to be available five days, and that’s 60 hours. Some lads can do six days in a week, and that’s 72 Hours of work. There is no let-up on the job.
All the workers on a shift are in teams and its full-on for the whole time you’re there. It’s a rat race and it’s not easy being active in the union. The men haven’t got time to think, never mind read a newspaper or a book, and the employers love that, with workers tired and always on the backfoot.
When I started on the docks at Peel, it was six days on, with 72 hours of work, and two days off. We were all employed by an agency called Blue Arrow then. But the men were determined to change that and we won and got rid of them. We are now employed directly by Peel Ports.
We think that there are spies in the workplace, taking gossip back to management. It’s like walking through a minefield. But we’re making gains, slowly but surely.
[Picture top from Unite website]
