The Struggles between Labourers and Employers over the Role of National Bargaining and Agreement in the British Port Industry during the Inter-war Years

Abstract

The essay aims to consider how trade unions and employers expected the functions of and dealt with a national bargaining and agreement of the British port industry in the inter-war years.

In the port industry of the early 1920s, trade unions lead the establishing of national bargaining and agreement as a minimum regulation of wage and working conditions, whereas employers tried to reduce the terrain of regulation by the agreement and to extend the room for local bargaining. However, in 1930s, employers attempted to extend the scope of national bargaining and agreement for trying to destroy local industrial relations institutions and regulations of wage and working conditions. In the inter-war years, the bargaining power and independency of dock labourers, who maintained the institutions and regulations that employers tried to destroy, was being consolidated. The change in the character of industry-wide national bargaining and agreement in the 1930s resulted from employer’s failure to destroy workers’ local struggles for the institutions and regulations.