“Much ado about nothing?” Reorganising the hiring system and decasualization in the port of Antwerp during the 1960s: motives, obstacles, outcome

Abstract

In the early 1960s, it became clearer all the time that the existing hiring system and the large extent to which dock labour in the port of Antwerp was still being done on a casual basis, gave rise to many abuses. Work refusal, temporary unemployment and job insecurity were phenomena which had always been linked to the dock industry, but which then kept on increasing. In 1963-1964 attempts were made under the impulse of the docker trade unions to reform the whole hiring and employment systems. The docker trade unions tried to find out how the singularities of the dock industry-with its varying arrival of goods, its varying labour demand and fluctuating unemployment figures-could be reconciled with the implementation of a form of permanent or casual/permanent employment which was affordable for the employers in general. With that idea of decasualization, the port of Antwerp jumped onto a train, which had been moving on an international basis for some time. In Great Britain and the Netherlands for instance, measures which went into that direction had already been taken before and after the Second World War. In the port of Antwerp, the switch over from a casual to a permanent or casual/permanent employment-indicated by the term “decasualization”-had not been firmly examined until then’. Against a background of work refusal, job insecurity, unemployment and other consequences of a labour organization which was largely oriented towards a casual basis, employers and employees tried to find solutions to give the occupation of dockworker some stability.