The Box - Marc Levinson [62]
The impending launch of Pan-Atlantic’s container service in the East, and the ongoing study of container usage by Matson, the largest West Coast ship line, made it clear that shipowners were intent on automating cargo handling. Although many members of his union opposed concessions of any sort, Bridges, protected by his credentials as a militant uncorrupted by his dealings with the bosses, began to argue publicly that the union needed to think ahead. “Those guys who think we can go on holding back mechanization are still back in the thirties, fighting the fight we won way back then,” he said.15
Its origins in the West’s turn-of-the-century labor radicalism, its remarkable victories in the strikes of 1934 and 1948, and the ideology of its leaders gave the rank and file unusual power within the ILWU. A change in the union’s position on work rules and automation could not be imposed from the top; it would have to be endorsed by the coastwide caucus of representatives elected by their local unions, and then approved by a vote of the entire longshore membership. The task of selling the need for a new approach fell to Bridges. He first presented the issue to the union’s negotiating committee, of which he was a member. In March 1956, as the ILWU caucus debated priorities for the upcoming contract negotiations, the negotiating committee urged that the union accept automation in return for higher wages and shorter working hours:
[M]uch of our past effort has gone into a somewhat unsuccessful attempt to retard the wheels of industrial mechanization progress. In many cases, these efforts have only resulted in our eventual acceptance of the new device, accompanied by our loss of jurisdiction over the new work involved…. We believe that it is possible to encourage mechanization in the industry and at the same time establish and re affirm our work jurisdiction, along with practical minimal manning scales, so that the ILWU will have all of the work from the railroad tracks outside the piers into the holds of the ships.16
This point of view was highly controversial within the union. The 1948 contract had left the ILWU firmly in control of the docks in almost every Pacific port. All longshoremen were either full ILWU “A-men” or else “B-men” who were hired as extras when all the A-men were employed, and hoped to get enough experience to be admitted to the union as A-men themselves. Most A-men belonged to regular gangs, with the same group dispatched together from the hiring hall under their elected gang boss, who was also a union member. The handling of each ship was supervised by a walking boss, an ILWU member as well. The stevedoring companies’ superintendents, nominally in charge, understood that it was usually wiser to get along with the union than to insist on strict enforcement of the contract. This cozy arrangement, which gave the longshoremen unusual control over their workplace, seemed to be threatened by the joint “Statement of Principles” put forth by the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Association at the start of their 1956 negotiations. The key provision read simply: “There shall be no requirement for employment of unnecessary men.”17
Bridges put the Statement of Principles to a membership vote and received only a tepid endorsement, with 40 percent of ILWU members voting no. He clearly had no mandate to agree to changes in manning requirements. Instead, the union and the Maritime Association signed a contract dealing with normal economic matters, and arranged to address mechanization and work rules in separate talks.
Those talks began early in 1957 but quickly foundered on employers’ complaints that union members were ignoring the existing contract. J. Paul St. Sure, head of the Pacific Maritime Association, made clear that the shipowners were unwilling to trade money for elimination of work rules until they were certain that Bridges could make ILWU locals live up to whatever bargain he struck. That