Two Ages of Waterfront Labour

Abstract

THERE ARE TWO crucial watersheds in the modem history of waterfront labour (1) the successful struggle, beginning with the Pacific Coast revolts of the 1930s, to set-up union-dominated hiring halls; and (2) the technological revolution in cargo handling and ship design associated with the introduction of containers in the 1960s and 70s. Bruce Nelson's historical treatment of waterfront labour focuses on the first of these watersheds, with particular emphasis on the interactions between seamen and longshoremen during the syndicalist renaissance'' of the late 1930s. William Finlay's sociological study is concerned with the effects of the second watershed—the technological revolution in cargo handling—on skill levels, job control and status hierarchies within die longshore labour process. A good sense of the dramatically different emphases of these books can be derived by comparing their dustjackets. The cover of the Nelson study shows a photograph of a march by picketing San Francisco longshoremen, during the first week of die legendary 1934 strike. Overlaid on this are photographs of two former Aussies who had a large impact on the US waterfront struggles of the 1930s: Harry Bridges, who was to become the dominant figure in the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU), and Harry Hynes, a rankand-file leader of the Communist-led Marine Workers Industrial Union (MWIU)