“The banter’s tremendous, the language is horrendous”

Claudia Leisinger telling us a tale of the demise of the Billingsgate fish porters.

“In January 2012, the City of London Corporation – effectively an independent governing institution – withdrew all trading licences from the porters, revoking a bylaw dating back to 1876. Without this protection, the porters could legally be replaced by cheap casual labour.

The LFMA (London Fish Merchants Association) has been trying to change the porters’ working conditions from a collective agreement (which gives them collective protection) to an individual contract and has found a powerful aid in the City of London Corporation, who is currently making the funds (£2.5 million) available to the merchants to buy out the porters.

The question is, what is the motivation to so determinedly get rid of 102 working men?”

Thanks for educating me Claudia.[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/40644907[/vimeo]