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Labour Market, Work Mentality and Syndicalism: Dock Labour in the United States and Hamburg, 1900–1950s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2009

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This international comparison firstly examines labour market organization, casual labour and work mentality in North American seaports and in Hamburg. By contrast to British ports, these ports finally dispensed with casual labour between the world economic crisis and the Second World War, and labour markets there were centralized. Secondly, the industrial militancy of mobile dockworkers without permanent jobs is examined through a consideration of syndicalist organizations (1919–1921), and interpreted as an interplay of experiences with power in the network of labour market, workplace and docklands. The study refers repeatedly to the decisive dividing line between regularly and irregularly employed dockworkers. National differences in trade union representation and dispute behaviour are analysed by reference to dockworkers' direct actions.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1997

References

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30 The lifestyle of casual labourers in Germany has been critically examined by: Grüttner, , Arbeitswelt, esp. pp. 192201Google Scholar; idem, “Arbeiterkultur versus Arbeiterbewegungskultur. Überlegungen am Beispiel der Hamburger Hafenarbeiter 1888–1933”, in Lehmann, A. (ed.), Studien zur Arbeiterkultur (Münster, 1984), pp. 244282Google Scholar; and from a supraregional viewpoint, idem, “Die Kultur der Armut”, in Haupt, Heinz Gerhard et al. (eds), Armut und Ausgrenzung. Jahrbuch Soziale Bewegungen, vol. 3 (Frankfurt and New York, 1987), pp. 1232.Google Scholar

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96 The interplay of social protest movement and industrial militancy as exemplified by the Ruhr miners is traced impressively by Hartewig, , Jahrzehnt, ch. 8.Google Scholar

97 See Weinhauer, , Alltag, p. 187f.Google Scholar

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99 See Weinhauer, , Alltag, p. 299Google Scholar; Grüttner, , “Konfliktpotential”, p. 155f.Google Scholar

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101 See Kimeldorf, , Reds or Rackets?, p. 29fGoogle Scholar; Nelson, , Workers on the Waterfront, p. 50f.Google Scholar

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105 On harbour theft, see Grüttner, Michael, “Working-Class Crime and the Labour Movement: Pilfering in the Hamburg Docks 1888–1923”, in Evans, Richard J. (ed.), The German Working-Class. The Politics of Everyday Life (London, 1982), pp. 5479Google Scholar; Weinhauer, , Alltag, ch. III.2.Google Scholar

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107 See StAHH Politische Polizei S 5900 vol. 1.

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113 In addition to the studies already mentioned, see Valen, Nelson Van, “‘Cleaning Up the Harbor': The Suppression of the I.W.W. at San Pedro, 1922–1925”, Southern California Quarterly, 66 (1984), pp. 147172CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Northrup, Herbert R., “The New Orleans Longshoremen”, Political Science Quarterly, 57 (1942), pp. 526544CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on Hamburg, see Weinhauer, , Alltag, p. 209f.Google Scholar, and “Zwischen Betrieb”, p. 15f.Google Scholar

114 Kimeldorf, , “Working-Class Culture”, p. 367.Google ScholarParker wrote, Carleton H.: “[…] the I.W.W membership in the West is consistently of one type, and one which has had a uniform economic experience. They are migratory workers currently called hobo workers”Google Scholar: Parker, Carleton H., The Casual Laborer and Other Essays (Seattle, 1972; original ed. 1920), p. 113f.Google Scholar The IWW sympathies of the Califomian itinerant labourers are referred to by Woirol, Gregory R., “Men on the Road: Early Twentieth-Century Surveys of Itinerant Labor in California”, California History, 70 (1991), pp. 192205 and 201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the social background of syndicalism in the port of Hamburg, see Weinhauer, , Alltag, p. 200f.Google Scholar

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116 See Weinhauer, , Alltag, pp. 316335.Google Scholar

117 See Nelson, , Workers on the Waterfront, p. 79.Google Scholar Characteristically, the leading proponents of an undogmatic communist trade union policy, including Sam Darcy and Harry Bridges, met in an assembly hall in the docklands district of San Francisco, the German-run Albion Hall. See Kimeldorf, , Reds or Rackets?, pp. 3749 and 120126Google Scholar; on Albion Hall, see p. 87. For the strong position of the Wobblies among casuals see footnote 114.

118 See ibid., pp. 42–46. However, Winslow, , On the Waterfront, p. 387Google Scholar, referring to the October 1919 strike, emphasizes a gradually growing influence, particularly among the Italian dockworkers in Brooklyn.

119 See Nelson, , Workers on the Waterfront, p. 83.Google Scholar

120 On Ryan, see Kimeldorf, , Reds or Rackets?, pp. 121f. and 153156.Google Scholar

121 See Ibid., pp. 261 and 112f.

122 See Arnesen, , Waterfront Workers of New Orleans, p. 105.Google Scholar

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127 See Nelson, , “‘Pentecost’”, p. 173.Google Scholar

128 Kimeldorf, , “World War II and the Deradicalization of American Labor”, p. 260f.Google Scholar There was a similar situation in New Orleans; see Arnesen, , Waterfront Workers of New Orleans, p. 172.Google Scholar In San Francisco job actions were also used to counter the Communist Party's efforts to increase the weight of the loads from 2,200 to 3,000 pounds during the productivity campaigns of the Second World War, see Kimeldorf, , Reds or Rackets?, p. 136.Google Scholar

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131 On these conflicts in British ports, see Phillips, and Whiteside, , Casual Labour, passim.Google Scholar

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