International Longshoremen's Association Research Articles

In the interest of others: organizations and social activism

In the Interest of Others develops a new theory of organizational leadership and governance to explain why some organizations expand their scope of action in ways that do not benefit their members directly. John Ahlquist and Margaret Levi document eighty years of such activism by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the United States and the Waterside Workers Federation in Australia. They systematically compare the ILWU and WWF to the Teamsters and the International Longshoremen's Association, two American transport industry labor unions that actively discouraged the pursuit of political causes unrelated to their own economic interests. Drawing on a wealth of original data, Ahlquist and Levi show how activist organizations can profoundly transform the views of members about their political efficacy and the collective actions they are willing to contemplate. They find that leaders who ask for support of projects without obvious material benefits must first demonstrate their ability to deliver the goods and services members expect. These leaders must also build governance institutions that coordinate expectations about their objectives and the behavior of members. In the Interest of Others reveals how activist labor unions expand the community of fate and provoke preferences that transcend the private interests of individual members. Ahlquist and Levi then extend this logic to other membership organizations, including religious groups, political parties, and the state itself.

"The Past Has Taught Us a Lesson": The International Longshoremen's Association and Black Workers in Mobile, 1903-1913

"The Past Has Taught Us a Lesson": The International Longshoremen's Association and Black Workers in Mobile, 1903-1913

Trends in Global Port Operations and Their Influence on Port Labor

The port industry has undergone substantial structural changes during the past 15 years. The emergence of global terminal operators, global oligopolistic market consolidation, vertical and horizontal integration of liner shipping, and the new structure of global production networks in relation to emerging technologies are only a few of the factors that have fundamentally influenced port labor. Ports are no longer isolated functional nodes of the transportation chain, but are a fundamental component of a seamless supply chain, working along with satellite and inland terminals. At the same time, marine terminals sometimes function as extended warehouses, providing flexible virtual inventory. These developments have created substantial challenges to port labor, including the need for upgraded working skills, enhanced productivity, and the ability to adopt flexible working conditions. Unionized port labor has been traditionally highly inflexible in changing attitudes and adapting to new port work practices. In contrast, the explosion of port service demand in emerging economies, particularly in East Asia, was followed by an unprecedented increase in port productivity, coupled by flexibility in port working practices that cannot be accepted by unionized port labor in the United States and Europe. This paper examines some of the current challenges and implications for the U.S. East Coast port labor force—the International Longshoremen's Association—due to global developments in international trade and global port operations. It proposes that future research incorporate a broad range of disciplines in order to understand the competitive environment facing longshoremen better.

Building a labor anthropology

At the port of Charleston, South Carolina in January of 2000, members of the predominantly African-American Local 1422 of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) picketed a ship being unloaded by nonunion workers. Their picket turned into a police riot, and in the aftermath, five dockworkers were arrested and charged with a felony. On the Global Waterfront: The Fight to Free the Charleston 5 by writer and former union organizer Suzan Erem and anthropologist E. Paul Durrenberger is an account of the successful international campaign on behalf of these workers. I attended an event sponsored by the New York City Charleston 5 Defense Committee in 2001. Defense committees were formed throughout the country, and there were dozens of meetings like this one. At the New York event, held in Brooklyn's Lafayette Presbyterian Church, an institution well known for its support of progressive causes, I listened to Local 1422 president Ken Riley and Bill Fletcher (then assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO) explain that the dockworkers were under house arrest and faced five years in jail. They also told us that the small, 600 member local was being sued for millions by both the shipping company, Nordana, and the union-busting stevedoring firm, WSI. As I learned that evening, and as Erem and Durrenberger masterfully show in On the Global Waterfront, this was not an ordinary labor-management dispute. The stakes were so high that they suggested class interest and struggle that went well beyond the particular conflict. The political ambition of the state Attorney General Charlie Condon was on the table. Condon pushed the Charleston police to up the riot charges to a felony so he could summon South Carolina's racist and anti-union legacy as he used this case to pursue higher office. Also at stake was the intense pressure for capital accumulation in the global shipping industry, a sector that used containerization for decades to

Black Working-Class Political Activism and Biracial Unionism: Galveston Longshoremen in Jim Crow Texas, 1919-1921

J. V. BELL, A FEDERAL AGENT WHO INVESTIGATED THE 1920 LONGSHOREMEN'S strike in Galveston, Texas, expressed alarm over militancy of island's black and white workers, which had prompted Governor William P. Hobby on June 7 to declare martial law on island. It was expression of class and racial assertiveness by black unionists that particularly disturbed Bell. He attributed this militancy to their long association with white trade unionists, even though Galveston's longshoreman locals, like other southern locals of International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), were racially segregated. In a report from Galveston on August 21, 1920, Bell complained, negroes in Galveston, through their long association on an equality basis with white Union Labor, have about arrived at time where they think they should be accepted on a par or equal with white race. He warned that the insolent manner of local African Americans toward white race will, in time, lead to serious disorders between races. In fact, he reported indignantly, I have never been in any city where negroes are so impudent and insolent as they are in Galveston. (1) Bell's racism notwithstanding, he did put his finger on an important source of black longshoremen's assertiveness. Despite degradations of Jim Crow and institutionalized racism at time, including in labor movement, biracial unionism--that is, organization of black and white workers into segregated locals--had given longshoremen a sense of empowerment. Of course, this was not what architects of racial segregation had anticipated, but as Bell suggested, cooperation with white unionists on docks generated a militancy that reached its fullest expression during strike. The crushing defeat inflicted on striking longshoremen, after months of martial law, suspension of Galveston's entire police force and city government, and occupation by Texas militia, was a major setback for Texas labor movement and those who had used biracial unionism to promote organized labor and civil rights in South. Racial cooperation on waterfront extended to politics as well. Although militancy of Galveston's black longshoremen was part of a national pattern in First World War era, black working-class participation in city politics provided another vibrant source of empowerment. (2) Black longshoremen formed an important activist bloc in a prolabor, reform-minded political coalition that captured power in 1919 city elections and again in 1921. At a time when many African Americans and poor whites in South were being disenfranchised through poll taxes, white primary, and other devices, black unionists in Galveston asserted themselves on waterfront, joined struggle against Jim Crow, and engaged in formal political process. The failure of strike of 1920 strained race relations and led to collapse of ILA locals by mid-decade, but black and white longshoremen continued their cooperation after strike, including an attempt to form an independent labor party in elections of 1920. The dockworkers' political and union activism did more than strain race relations, however; it also sharpened intraracial divisions in Galveston's black community. The literature on longshoremen's strike to date has not examined role of black, or even white, working-class politics before, during, and after strike. Until recently, in fact, black labor activism and experiences of black urban workers, including those on Galveston's waterfront, had remained largely hidden, ignored, or marginal at best in studies of southern labor and black history. Eric Arnesen has pointed out that just as labor history has had something of a 'race' problem, African-American history too has had its own 'class' or 'labor' problem. (3) Due particularly to works by Arnesen, Michael K. Honey, Tera W. Hunter, Robin D. …

Opening the Closed Shop: The Galveston Longshoremen's Strike of 1920-1921

Opening the Closed Shop:The Galveston Longshoremen's Strike of 1920–1921 Joseph Abel (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. The Mallory steamship line's coastwise docks in Galveston as they appeared during the 1920s. Courtesy of the Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas. [End Page 316] On June 25, 1920, an anonymous writer submitted a poem to the Union Review in Galveston. It read Forth went the Hobby mandate / Throughout this Texas land To mobilize the National Guard / That was his stern command. Ho! Martial law and war declared / "By my halidom," said he, "I'll humble that Galveston / Galveston by-the-Sea." In olden days in Ancient Rome / When Carthage did annoy The Romans sent their Scipio/ That Carthage to destroy. A modern pigmy Scipio / This Hobby, he would be, And make a modern Carthage of / Galveston by-the-Sea. Several pompous Generals / And Colonels too galore, And Majors bold and Captains / And Lieutenants by the score, All riding fast and furious / With eagerness and glee To capture poor old Galveston / Galveston by-the-Sea. But what of those, the rank and file / Those Texas' mothers' sons Who must obey this mandate / And handle murderous guns? Have they forsworn their manhood? / Must they automatons be? And murder men and mothers / In Galveston by-the-Sea. "Oh, Liberty! Oh, Liberty!" / Once cried a famous dame; "Alas! Alas! The awful crimes / Committed in thy name!" 'Tis thus may cry Galveston / As to tyranny she bends her knee For outraged homes and human rights / Galveston by-the-Sea.1 [End Page 317] These stanzas illustrate the frustration of the island's coastwise longshoremen in late June 1920 —on strike for a 25 percent wage increase since March 19. Day after day, hundreds of strikebreakers worked an increasing number of ships tied up along the docks of the Morgan Line and Mallory shipping companies. No strangers to conflict, the longshoremen were used to such tactics, but the event that inspired these verses caught them completely off guard. On June 7, the "modern pigmy Scipio" Gov. William P. Hobby declared martial law and took control of the strike situation in Galveston. Within days, more than one thousand soldiers occupied the island and for the next four months, the striking dockworkers indeed bent their knees to what they believed was tyranny, watching as "pompous Generals" and "Majors bold" trampled upon their rights. By the time the troops left in October, the union stronghold of Galveston bore at least a metaphorical similarity to ancient Carthage—although the city remained physically intact, its entire organized labor movement lay in ruins, especially the longshore unions. Much like their Roman predecessors, business leaders and their allies in Austin hoped to prevent future annoyances from this modern Carthage; rather than salt the earth, however, these men planted and nurtured the antiunion doctrines of the open shop. Ultimately, the Galveston longshoremen's strike was a major turning point in the history of the Texas labor movement. Supported by bayonets and rifles, Texas's business interests joined the nationwide assault on the American working class and launched the capital-state alliance that would prove so disastrous for organized labor through the 1920s.2 When the 1,600 members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) Locals 385 and 807 walked off their jobs on March 19, 1920, they had no idea that their actions would have such dramatic repercussions. The weeks and months leading up to the strike had demonstrated the longshoremen's continued faith in the wartime bargaining power granted them by the federal government through the National Adjustment Commission (NAC). The origins of the strike lay in two hearings held between ILA representatives, the shipping companies, and the NAC in October and December 1919. Presented with a demand for higher wages, the shipping representatives stubbornly refused, arguing instead that Congress must first [End Page 318] allow an increase in freight rates. The newly reorganized peacetime NAC, meanwhile, backed off, stating that the privately owned shipping companies bore full responsibility for resolving the wage dispute, thus effectively eschewing its functions as arbitrator. By March 1920, the longshoremen had had enough of this back-and-forth. Following the lead...

Labor's spatial praxis and the geography of contract bargaining in the US east coast longshore industry, 1953–1989

This paper examines the production of new geographical scales of contract bargaining in the United States east coast longshore industry during the post-Second World War period. In particular, it analyses how the International Longshoremen's Association, which represents east coast waterfront workers, forged a national contract in response to political challenges by a rival union and economic challenges brought about by the introduction of new labor-saving technologies such as containerization. As a means to equalize working conditions in ports from Maine to Texas the union used strikes, work slowdowns, legal action, political pressure and cargo-handling boycotts to force reluctant employers in 1957 to agree to a master contract covering the North Atlantic ports. Upon completion of negotiations in the North Atlantic, the terms of this master contract were also usually adopted by ports in the South Atlantic and Gulf regions. The implementation of a master contract represented a significant change from the system of port-by-port bargaining which had traditionally dominated labor relations in the industry. In response, employers subsequently felt compelled to restructure their own organization so that by the 1970s a number of regional employer groups had formed throughout the industry to negotiate for several ports at once. Following its success in securing a regional master contract, in 1977 the union negotiated a national agreement covering a number of items related to job security. However, during the 1980s the increasing costs of the union's contracts encouraged many West Gulf employers to turn to cheaper non-union labor to the point where, in 1986, 11 locals in this region broke with the national union and offered concessions as a means to preserve work for their members. This schism poses a significant threat to the union's efforts to continue ensuring that all dockers enjoy the same basic contractual rights. The paper shows how struggles over the scale at which bargaining takes place have been fundamental to the development of the industry's economic geography. Furthermore, the fact that groups of dockers adopted an explicitly geographical response to the threat of job loss raises questions about how workers' activities are theorized in explanations of the production of the economic geography of capitalism.

The Making of a Labor Radical: Harry Bridges, 1901-1934

For two generations of Americans, from mid-1930s to late 1970s, Harry Bridges was leading voice of left within organized labor. When Pacific Coast longshoremen went on strike in 1934 and were quickly joined by other maritime workers, Bridges held office only as a member of executive committee of San Francisco local of International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) and as chairman of its strike committee. He nonetheless emerged as a key leader-perhaps even key leader-in coast-wide maritime strikes, and he was soon elected to presidency of San Francisco longshore local and then to presidency of Pacific Coast District of ILA. With split between AFL and CIO, Bridges led Pacific Coast District into Congress of Industrial Organizations as International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU). He became its first president and also western regional director for CIO. In mid-1937, Time magazine put him on its cover and called him the most conspicuous maritime labor leader in U.S. today.

The Waterfront Commission of the Port of New York: A History and Appraisal

This study recounts the history and evaluates the record of the Waterfront Commission of the Port of New York, established in 1953 to rid the port of organized crime. The agency's ambitious purpose has not been realized, the author finds; for example, in the 1970s an FBI investigation resulted in indictments and convictions of many figures in the New York-New Jersey longshore industry, including the vice-president of the International Longshoremen's Association. The Commission has, however, successfully combatted many blatant forms of corruption that were once commonplace, and in the process significantly improved the longshoremen's working conditions. The Commission's experiences may, the author concludes, be useful in showing what can and cannot be done by government intervention to stem organized crime in an industry.

The Primary-Secondary Distinction without the Primary: The New Secondary Boycott Law of Allied International, Inc. v. International Longshoremen's Association

The Primary-Secondary Distinction without the Primary: The New Secondary Boycott Law of Allied International, Inc. v. International Longshoremen's Association

United States: Supreme Court Opinion in International Longshoremen's Association V. Allied International (Russian Invasion of Afghanistan; Refusal to Unload Soviet Cargoes; Violation of U.S. Labor Law)

United States: Supreme Court Opinion in International Longshoremen's Association V. Allied International (Russian Invasion of Afghanistan; Refusal to Unload Soviet Cargoes; Violation of U.S. Labor Law)

National Labor Relations Board v. International Longshoremen's Association, Local No. 1581, AFL-CIO. 489 F.2d 635

National Labor Relations Board v. International Longshoremen's Association, Local No. 1581, AFL-CIO. 489 F.2d 635

The March Inland: The Stockton Cannery Strike of 1937: Part I

Research Article| April 01 1972 The March Inland: The Stockton Cannery Strike of 1937: Part I GERALD A. ROSE GERALD A. ROSE Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Southern California Quarterly (1972) 54 (1): 67–82. https://doi.org/10.2307/41170399 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation GERALD A. ROSE; The March Inland: The Stockton Cannery Strike of 1937: Part I. Southern California Quarterly 1 April 1972; 54 (1): 67–82. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41170399 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentSouthern California Quarterly Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1972 The Historical Society of Southern California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Computer Hiring of Dock Workers in the Port of New York

Focuses on the use of computers in the hiring of dock workers in the Port of New York. Creation of real-time-on-line electronic data processing system; Historical background of the hiring practices; Role of the International Longshoremen's Association and the New York Shipping Association in the adoption of computers; Applications of the computers. (Abstract copyright EBSCO.)

The Development of Labor Peace in the Port of Boston

Focuses on the dispute settlement system that was developed in the Port of Boston in Massachusetts in 1954. Advantage of the membership in the International Longshoremen's Association; Details of the longshoremen's strike on January 5, 1912; Aspects of the work-rules question; Information on the critical industrial relations problem in the early 1950s; Effects of the provisions of the 1954 dispute settlement system. (Abstract copyright EBSCO.)

Dispute Settlement in the New York Longshore Industry

In contrast to the widespread attention given to disputes and work stoppages in the shipping industry in the Port of New York, scant publicity has been given to the recent efforts of employers and the International Longshoremen's Association to resolve grievances on the piers through peaceful means. This article discusses the grievance machinery established by the New York Shipping Association and the ILA in 1955 and its accomplishments in settling disputes. (Author's abstract courtesy EBSCO.)

Same Work—Different Union; The Korean Truce Talks; Crisis in the Middle East and North Africa; The 82nd Congress; German Unification Again; The British Election; Political Rights are for Using

In 1945, Joseph P. ("King") Ryan, lifetime President of the International Longshoremen's Association (AFL), made his usual back-door agreement with the New York Shipping Association. It was a ten-cent deal and the rank and file longshoremen of New York showed their disapproval by striking. Ryan went back into negotiations, and the final settlement, following upon an arbitrator's award, was an increase of twenty-five cents an hour.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The San Francisco General Strike

IN MID-JULY, approximately ioo,ooo trade unionists of the San Francisco Bay region staged for four days the most extensive general strike ever to occur in the United States. To students of international relations in the Pacific area, this casts California labor in a somewhat unfamiliar role. The agitation against Chinese immigration in the 'seventies, which gained power when Chinese rose to be employers competing against American employers; the cries against the incoming Japanese, who offered stiff competition to both laborers and farmers; the efforts to ban immigration of Mexicans and Filipinos-these are the activities for which organized labor on the American Pacific Coast, and especially in California, is best known over the rim of the Pacific. But this general strike, too, is linked closely with the traditions of California labor. For the original and enduring issue in the longshoremen's strike, out of which the general strike developed, has also been the central issue in the major labor conflicts of San Francisco for nearly half a century, many of which, like the present one, have centered about the waterfront. On May 9, I934, the longshoremen of San Francisco and other Pacific Coast ports went on strike. Various demands were made, but the principal issue in San Francisco, which was the main focus of the conflict, was whether or not of the hiring should be transferred from the Waterfront Employers' Union to the International Longshoremen's Association (I. L. A.), affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. This same issue was at stake in the first conflict between another maritime union and the first shipowner's association in San Francisco. As early as i886 the Shipowners' Association of the Pacific Coast had established a hiring hall to break union control. The men struck, proposed joint control of the shipping office, were refused, ( 27I >