Maritime industrial relations: concepts and consequences

British merchant seamen cannot legally strike while their ship is at sea or in a foreign port: neither could they, until 1970, legally strike while working on ships in UK ports. Difficulties of union organization, conservative union leadership in the period spanning the turn of the century and the 1914–18 war, the authority of lawful command, and an over-supply of seamen are some of the factors that have made industrial relations in the British Merchant Navy unlike those of any other industry.