ABSTRACT
The Transport and General Workers’ Union, with its very heterogeneous membership, has adopted a form of sectional organisation under which each important group possesses representative machinery of its own. Dock-workers present a difficult problem on account of their liability to casual employment. Large port authorities, such as the Port of London Authority, employ nucleus staffs of permanent workers receiving a regular weekly wage. But most dock work is intermittent, so that actual earnings are often much lower than the daily wage-rates suggest. Nevertheless, waterside conditions have been considerably improved; and the dock workers are a well organised group in most of the larger ports. The busmen, like the miners, are organised round their places of work, in groups for the various garages and depots. These groups exist side by side with the branches, which have a more mingled membership, and this form of ‘shop’ organisation partly accounts for the easy growth of a militant temper.
