PC

The short version of my argument is unsurprising considering the book’s title: power. These matters are complex, but I contend that, in the 1930s, San Francisco dockworkers had the power to eradicate the many horrible aspects of casual labor and hiring though they — crucially — held on to some attractive aspects, particularly that workers decided when they wanted to work. No Monday to Friday, nine to five grind for them. I named this “decasualization from below.”

By contrast, in Durban, employers and the state wanted to destroy dockers’ ability to coordinate “stay-aways” (strikes, basically) that exploited a legal loophole; black workers, by law, could not strike but casual workers, by law, did not have a guaranteed job, so if they all didn’t report for work, they weren’t striking. That is, when a few thousand dockers didn’t seek to be hired one day, essentially it was a strike.

In order to rid themselves of this ongoing problem, which the dockers increasingly deployed in coordination with anti-apartheid groups like the African National Congress, in 1959 employers and the government instituted “decasualization from above,” i.e. a new hiring and employment system. In each case, the side with the power promoted decasualization for their own ends.

Similarly, dockworker power shaped how containerization proceeded. In Durban, dockers had little power to control how containers were introduced, so they suffered all the pain: half the workforce was fired inside of three years, nor did they see a dime in increased wages despite rising productivity. In addition, as a result of containerization, when millions of other black workers started organizing to fight apartheid and their own poverty, Durban dockers — for decades among the most militant workers in the country—were silent.

By contrast, in San Francisco and across the Pacific Coast, the ILWU was strong enough that employers had no choice but to negotiate over containerization. The union successfully protected their current generation of workers — not a single worker was laid off — and commanded much higher wages, a “share of the machine,” as Bridges called it. Very rarely do employers ask workers before introducing new tech, so the fact that shippers did so is further proof of dockworker power. Yet containerization definitely weakened the union.

What could Bridges and the rest of the union have been done differently? It’s no easy question. But I suggest that the union missed an opportunity to advocate for an old Wobbly solution: the four-hour day.

Workers in the United States fought for about eighty years for an eight-hour workday, implemented in 1938 with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Considering the massive gains in productivity as well as population growth of the nation and world, it’s quite reasonable that all of us workers could work less—for at least the same earnings.

Alas, such an idea, as far as I know, was never seriously discussed during the negotiations in the late 1950s and 1960s. It’s now been over eighty years since the FLSA and many workers (wage and salaried) toil far more than eight hours a day.

Today, I don’t know of a greater threat to workers than automation. Pick any industry. Other than climate change, I think this matter is the greatest challenge of the twenty-first century. Dockworkers also, once more, are at risk of another wave of automation that could create, in the words of shipping corporations and port boosters, “fully automated ports.” That means no dockworkers. No doubt, there would be a handful of people pushing buttons but, truly, there are companies pushing this agenda—and not because of productivity gains. There are studies that suggest today’s dockworkers are as productive as fully automated ports. Instead, employers continue pushing for more automation because machines don’t engage in work stoppages. At least not yet.

I undertook this comparative study of Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area to examine how and why dockworkers had — and still have — power. In each city, dockworkers drew on longstanding radical traditions to promote racial equality. They persevered when a new technology — containerization — sent a shockwave of layoffs through the industry. Even today, workers in the world’s ports can harness their role, at a strategic choke point, to promote their labor rights. They also have demonstrated an impressive commitment to internationalism and leftist politics by engaging in transnational work stoppages to protest racism and authoritarianism.