The latest issue of Ministry of Labour Gazette contains an ex i analysis of facts and figures about strikes in. i954. If one ue a the mass of figures it is possible to glean some important facts. Facts which are useful for socialists and which in some cases expose some of the propaganda put around about “irresponsible strikers".
There were more strikes in 1964 than 1963, they involved more workers and more working days were lost. A comparison with recent years, however, shows that it was by no means a boom year for strikes, for the number of days lost was lower than in any year, except 1963, since 1956. Year No.of strikes No. of workers involved No. of working days lost 1957 25859 1,359,000 8,412,000 1958 2,629 524,000 3,462,000 : 1959 2 5093 646,000 5,270,000 : 1960 24832 819,000 3,024,000 1961 2,686 779,000 3,046,000 1962 2,449 4,423,000 59798 ,000 1963 2,068 593,000 1,755,000 1964 2,524 883,000 2,277,000
The wide variation in these figures is, in most cases, accounted for by particular big strikes: for instance in 1957 the engineering stoppage caused a loss of 4 million working days and a national shipbuilding strike a further 2,150,000. In 1959 some 34 million days were lost in the printing strike, while in 1962 about 3,785,000 days were lost through two national stoppages in engineering and shipbuilding and a stoppage on the railways. If we subtract the days lost in the big disputes we get a remarkably stable average of of about 2-24m, working days lost; 1964 was just a little below that average.
An industrial breakdowm reveals a very uneven strike level: Coal mining, Ironand Steel, Shipbuilding, Motor Vehicles and Ports all having 500-1,000 working days lost per 1,000 workers. At the other end of the scale several industries, Bread and Flour, Tobacco, Pharmaceutical products and Sea Transport, had no strikes of any significance, whilst important industries such as Agriculture, Pottery, Printing, Distributive, etc., had less than 10 days lost per 1,000 workers. In terms of the number of disputes the variation is even more pronounced: Mining accounted for 2 out of every 5 strikes, Iron and Steel, Engineering, Motor Vehicles, Construction and Ports accounted for another third of the strikes. Thus we see that strikes are more likely in industries where : there has been the greatest rationalisation (Mining, Motors, Iron and Steel), where there are the most changes in day-to-day working conditions (Mining, Ports and ear and where local agreements play an important role (Mining, Motors and Ports
‘ss *
Most strikes were short, 63% of them lasting two days or less. These short strikes involved over 53% of the workers who took part in strikes. At the other end of the scale 1.4% of the strikes, involving 0.7% of the workers accounted for 10% of all days lost in industrial disputes. This picture is repeated when the strikes are analysed according to the number of days lost in each strike. 61.7% of the strikes involved a loss of less than 250 working days, but those involving a loss of more than 50,000 days (3 in number) accounted for 11.34 of all working days lost.
When the strikes are analysed according to cause we find the following position:
Continued/