Just to reiterate, xmonad 0.12 from GIT allows me to reset the layout but avoidstruts does not work.

Same xmonad.hs code but w/o docksStartupHook under xmonad 0.12 from haskell, still allows me to reset the layout but also respects docs (avoidstruts) if and only if I reset the layout (mod-shift-space) on all "visible" workspaces after an xmonad start/restart. "Non-visible" workspaces seem to work fine, avoidstruts works when spawning a window client; as does reset layout.