Contesting Globalization on the Waterfront

Ten years after the abolition of Britain’s National Dock Labour Scheme (NDLS), the right-wing Institute of Economic Affairs celebrated ‘A decade of unparalleled industrial peace ... despite radical change and restructuring.’ In fact, strikes have virtually disappeared from Britain’s waterfront precisely because of radical change and restructuring, most notably the dismissal of more than 80 per cent of the former registered dock labour force, including virtually all trade union activists, the widespread return of casual and contract labor, and the withdrawal of trade union recognition for collective bargaining and even individual representation. In other ports around the world, however, the picture is very different. On the West Coast of the United States, for example, employers claim that over 135 illegal work stoppages occurred between July 1996 and July 1998 and further disputes accompanied the coastwise contract negotiations in 1999. Longshoremen at the port of Colombo in Sri Lanka have staged a succession of strikes over privatization, which are still on-going (July 1999), and similar disputes have recently hit ports in Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Greece, India, Pakistan, Portugal, Zaire and many other countries around the world. According to The Strike Club, the mutual insurer of shipowners, charterers and vessel operators against strikes and other causes of delay, the number of claims arising from strike action has increased significantly over the last 4 years, with a growing number of ‘politically motivated’ disputes directed towards government policy causing delays. In 1998, claims were received from over twenty countries and delays caused by cargo handling disputes were almost a third higher in 1997-98 than the five-year period from 1992-97. The Club’s latest policy year, to February 1999, saw the largest claims for nearly 10 years.