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THE JONES-ALDINGTON COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATIONS
The Jones-Aldington committee was established at the end of May 1972 at the initiative of the Tory Minister of Transport John Peyton who had been since March "concerned about the apparently remote relationship between the leaders of Britain's port authorities and the trade unions." Peyton brought [Lord] Aldington who is head of the Port of London Authority, [Jack] Jones, and Sir Humphrey Browne, chairman of the British Transport Docks Board (which controls the Hull and Southampton docks) together at the unofficial informal meeting. "All the men present knew that the ports were on a knife-edge. Nobody disputed that the industry was heavily over-manned and that although high severance pay was easing this difficulty, two events had changed things dramatically; the decision by the Liverpool haulage firm, Heaton, to take picketing dockers before the Industrial Court and the closure of a major London stevedoring firm, Southern Stevedores. The national unofficial shop stewards committee was pressing for trouble, and a dock strike was inevitable." (S[unday?] T[imes?],20.8.72) The Committee was an unofficial, extra-mural body from its inception. Though it had the governments blessing, it had the undoubted advantage of not having to work through the slow, established channels or keep to any statutory obligations handed down by Parliament, or be in any way representative of formal interests (e.g. equal numbers of employers and trade unionists and outside expert opinion). Recognising that real concession was necessary quickly, the Conservative Minister made his plans accordingly. He bypassed the "proper, established" methods of "orderly" industrial relations and suggested unofficial committee to the most powerful, most conscious men in the industry (from both sides) who agreed with him and acted accordingly. The most conscious, powerful members of the industry convinced the rest of the employers of the necessity and therefore reasonableness of making concessions (see Communist 52, 'The Unofficial General Strike').
Using unofficial, peaceful persuasion the Jones-Aldington Committee had gained the following points from the employers by 28th July: (l) the Temporary Unattached Register established by the Devlin Report in 1965 for dockers for whom there was no work but who were unwilling to leave the industry would be abolished. The 16OO men at present on the Register (on £23 weekly fallback pay) would be re-allocated to port employers and there would continue to be no compulsory redundancy. (2) as an additional inducement to leave the industry voluntarily, severance pay would be increased from £2300 to £4000 for five months requiring an additional sum which the Government agreed to subscribe). (3) the port authorities would now join the unions in approaching container firms to give priority of employment to registered dock workers - i.e. peaceful persuasion and rational discussion would be extended. (4) those ports not involved in the National Docks Labour Scheme would be invited to contribute towards the cost of implementing the cost of severance payments. These are ports not employing registered dock labour - the newer, smaller ports like Felixstowe. There has been no demand from the dockers employed at these ports to join the Scheme because (a) there is no threat of redundancy as business is increasing (b) wages and conditions are acceptable: these dockers are not sweated or amongst the 'lower-paid'. (5) A later Jones-Aldington Committee Report would take up the question of these non-scheme ports, i.e. whether they should be peacefully persuaded to become part of the National Dock Labour Scheme.
This interim report was rejected by the docks delegate conference for the same reasons as the unofficial shop stewards committee: point (3) was not cast-iron enough, they doubted that the dock employers would try hard enough to persuade container employers to employ dockers; and points (4) and (5) did not go far enough to end the privileged position of the non-scheme ports. The dockers' reasoning apparently is that if the non-scheme ports are forced to implement the same conditions as the scheme ports (London, Liverpool, Hull etc) there will then be no reason for shipowners continuing to move business away from scheme ports to the newer, smaller ones. The dockers see their reason for moving business as being that the workers at the non-scheme ports were more exploited and therefore the port charges cheaper. If these ports were forced into the Scheme, their charges would rise and ships would have no reason to move from London to Felixstowe.
The port employers (having been peacefully persuaded by a voluntary, unofficial committee) voted to accept this interim report. Why? The concessions in it come wholly from the employers side. The fail-back pay for dockers on the Temporary Unattached Register (TUR), pensions and voluntary severance pay had been financed by employers by a total gross levy of l4% of their total wage bill paid to the National Docks Labour Board. With the abolition of the TUR, labour costs will increase since instead of the 2% of their wages bill paid to the TUR, employers must now meet the full cost of re-employing 1600 men and the continuing cost of holding onto men at present employed who would have been put onto the TUR in future because of changing technology bringing higher labour productivity. The Jones-Aldington Committee suggested that a joint fund be established to help those employers carrying these additional men. "The problem is that the employers will have to finance the fund themselves, and the committee concedes that if the 142% levy they are already paying is increased 'it would almost certainly force further employers out of business'." (Sunday Times, 30.7.72) The Committee's solution to this was the bigger severance pay which it hoped would induce enough dockers to leave the docks in the next 5 months to ensure that the joint fund would remain at about l4% of the wage bill. (Presumably, the non-scheme ports, if persuaded to contribute, would also help.) The Sunday Times concluded that the employers accepted the report with its unmistakable implication of increased labour costs and therefore increased likelihood that further firms would close and that the remaining firms would then bear even further increased labour costs (remember there is no compulsory redundancy - the dockers won a right to work at their specific job) because: "As one employer said: 'We had to accept the report. We had no choice. We're in such a bloody mess anyway'." (ibid).
The employers hoped that the interim report would be sufficient to avert a national dock strike. (The effect of the national dock strike in 1970 was to accelerate the movement of ships to the smaller unregistered ports.) The Labour Editor of the Financial Times concluded that the upheaval far from being damaging could prove a positive help: "These events have provided the much needed boost for the ports industry to try, through its own inquiries and reports, to solve its own problems. If the militants would accept this and employers would grasp the opportunity for reforms, the industry and its workforce could have a brighter future." (Financial Times, 18.8.72)