‘We’re not just key critical workers when there’s a pandemic,’ says Liverpool dock worker Ian*, as he stands on the picket line early on Tuesday morning. ‘We’re key critical workers all year round.’

A rainbow was shining over the Port of Liverpool behind him as hundreds of dockworkers and engineers gathered on their second week of strike action. Despite the on-and-off rain, morale was clearly high and growing higher: music was playing from a large speaker, itself drowned out by the constant roll of car horns beeping in support, and a group of workers stopped wagons at the traffic lights to explain their dispute, buoyed by the strength rallying behind them.

More than 560 port operatives and maintenance engineers have taken action this month in response to a below-inflation pay deal of 7 percent from Mersey Docks and Harbour Company (MDHC), a subsidiary of the Peel Ports group. At the eleventh hour, bosses made an increased offer of 8.3 percent, accompanied by a one-off payment of £750—but strikers tell Tribune that ‘only a handful’ of workers were offered over 7 percent, with bosses still refusing to bring a ‘reasonable’ offer to the table.

The effect of spiralling inflation on pay isn’t the only issue for the dockers. Workers are also striking over a refusal to follow through on a promised 2021 pay review—the last took place nearly three decades ago, in 1995—and a failure to deliver on an agreement to improve shift rotas. In all, as Ian puts it, ‘we feel overworked, undervalued and underpaid.’ The effect of that feeling is clear to see: in a ballot with an 88 percent turnout, a massive 99 percent voted for strike action.

Tommy, a port operative and shop steward, says workers had hoped the company was going to ‘do the right thing’ this time. The hope seems reasonable, given MDHC’s own finances: the company turned £41.5 million profit last year, almost double that of the year before, and a data leak even showed that one director had been given a bonus of £4.5 million in 2021. Workers, meanwhile, are simply asking for a fair cut of the money that’s been made off their backs. ‘They’ve made £161 million in profit since Covid,’ explains Phil. ‘Giving us a raise in line with inflation will only cost them around £2.5 million. They just need to shave a tiny bit off their profits.’

The issues facing the dockers have rarely been more pertinent, with RPI inflation now sitting above 12 percent and deeper economic turmoil looming following Kwasi Kwarteng’s bankers’ budget. As Tommy points out, even a rise in line with that inflation is ‘just balanced’: the cost of living crisis is ‘killing everyone’, he says, with some dock workers spending more than £140 a week on fuel just getting to work. The lowest paid workers on the dock make little over £11 an hour, Ian tells Tribune, while Tommy adds that other ports in the country are ‘miles ahead’ of Liverpool in terms of pay. ‘We’re not being greedy,’ he says. ‘It’s just ridiculous.’

The offer of a real-terms pay cut is all the more insulting given that dockers were celebrated as critical workers during the pandemic, keeping vital goods moving as lockdowns forced much of the rest of the country to a standstill. That appreciation for the work dockers do, pandemic or no pandemic, has vanished since: one tells Tribune they weren’t given anything to say thank you. ‘We were critical workers for two years through Covid,’ says Tommy. ‘We didn’t know what the outcome was going to be, we didn’t know what the end date was—but we worked through, and we got it done.’

The refusal of bosses to match the commitment of workers shown during Covid is a recurring source of anger, not just in Liverpool, but across the country—and one of the reasons this dispute arrives at a time of growing worker militancy and spreading solidarity. Phil, who has worked on the port for around 14 years and in that time has never been out on strike, tells Tribune that this is the first time that the dockworkers and the engineers, who have different union recognition agreements, have joined forces. The result is all workers having a ‘better, stronger voice,’ he says, particularly in the face of new anti-trade union laws allowing employers to bring in agency workers to make up staff shortages caused by industrial action (and even more anti-union legislation in the works).

‘If we [the engineers] were in there, they might try to get agency workers to replace the port operatives,’ says Phil. ‘Then we’d fall out, so it makes sense to stick together.’ In a number of weeks, he adds, the port could be brought to a complete standstill, with dock masters, senior control room staff, shift managers, and vessel traffic services officers, all employed by Peel Ports and unionised with Unite the union, also being balloted for industrial action.

Solidarity has been a driving force beyond the city, too. The tail end of the dockers’ first set of strikes have coincided with those at Felixstowe, which Phil tells Tribune will ‘paralyse’ around 60 percent of the UK’s containerised products going in and out of the country for at least a week. During Felixstowe’s first wave of strike action in August, Ian says, Liverpool workers refused to work on any vessels diverted from Felixstowe and sent a delegation down to the picket line to show support. With the two sets of workers out on strike, he hopes that the government might make the effort to get involved—‘though I wouldn’t bet on it,’ he adds.

Picketers have also been visited by local Liverpool MPs, along with others during this weekend’s Labour Party conference. Perhaps most powerfully, the dockers have received international support from longshoremen from America, who donated $15,000 to the strike fund, as well as from dockers from the likes of Spain and Denmark, who sent delegations to the picket line in solidarity. Liverpool has long been known for its left-wing politics, but the solidarity with those out on strike is nation- and world-wide, and their organising and action rising to the fore as the one way to fight the injustices workers face. ‘If you do nothing,’ says Phil, ‘that’s exactly what you’ll get.’

With the strength of the picket line in full swing, it’s clear that feeling and the movement accompanying it aren’t going to be shut down any time soon, no matter what bosses and their government try. The workers are ultimately keen to return to work, explains Ian, but only on their terms. ‘We’ve never shut the door on communication, but you can talk until the cows come home. Unless the company comes back with an improved offer, it’s a stalemate.’ It’s up to them, he makes clear, to decide their priorities. ‘We’re here for the long haul. We’re not going to be starved back to work.’