Before dawn on Sunday morning, June 20, 2010, upwards of one thousand people gathered near the Port of Oakland, an industrial, sometimes barren section of west Oakland. They then converged on four gates operated by the Stevedore Services of America, one of the main shipping companies on the US Pacific coast and in the world. The protesters were awaiting the arrival of an Israeli cargo vessel in order to protest Israel's ongoing blockade of the Palestinian residents of Gaza as well as the recent Israeli assault on Turkish vessels in the Mediterranean that had resulted in the deaths of nine civilians, part of an international group sympathetic to the Gaza Palestinians. For hours activists protested, including a chant that referenced both the Wobblies and antiapartheid struggle: “An injury to one is an injury to all, bring down the apartheid wall.” Crucially—and not coincidentally—members of Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) refused to cross this picket line, citing safety reasons. After several hours of negotiations, an arbitrator agreed with the ILWU members that the situation could cause harm to the workers, who therefore could not be punished for not unloading the vessel. Subsequently, the Zim (Israeli shipping line) vessel departed from San Francisco Bay, looking to be unloaded in nearby Monterey Bay. Simultaneously, dock unions in Norway, South Africa, Sweden, and Turkey—all members of The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF)—also announced that they would join the “Boycott against Israel campaign.” These dramatic, militant, and overtly political actions by longshore workers across the globe are not unprecedented—at least for union dockers—though they are almost unheard of in the twenty-first century for other sorts of workers on any continent.Footnote ¹

Such actions alone justify serious analysis from historians and other scholars of labor unions, working class struggles, and international trade. Further, these protests might counteract the sentiment that there are enough books on the history of longshore workers; undeniably, many already exist. Previously, I thought the same thing. Then, I started working on my second book on dockworkers. That dockers might take such dramatic stands in 2010 does not surprise me nor should it anyone who appreciates the particularities of these workers and the marine transport industry. Indeed, it is a great time for historians interested in the labor of longshore workers, and the four books in this review demonstrate that there are numerous new directions to explore. None, really, are “traditional” labor histories, and that is a good thing. All look at the world of marine transport workers and their communities but not so much at the labor process itself.

Indeed, these books highlight the continuing significance of longshore workers, labor, and unions across the entire twentieth century and into the twenty-first, as demonstrated particularly by the still-timely book by Suzan Erem and E. Paul Durrenberger. All four also explore why it is that longshore workers are particularly likely to unionize and act militantly as well as to have a broad definition of solidarity. Although these four books examine dockers in the United States, it is undeniable that these phenomena exist across the globe. The beauty of these books is that they treat a wide variety of important and engaging topics; none are typical labor histories of longshore workers a la Eric Arnesen, Bruce Nelson, or my own earlier writing. Instead, these books hint at possible directions that scholars of marine transport workers might go: crossing scholarly boundaries and exploring connections to religion, politics, and community like Fisher, Schwartz, Johnson, and Erem and Durrenberger all do; examining the global implications of marine transport, again as Erem and Durrenberger do; explicitly comparative projects, as in Johnson's and Schwartz's books; or engaging with media and pop culture, like Fisher.

Longshore workers' power comes from two distinct avenues—though both are very much rooted in the work process. Traditionally, dockworkers were relatively strong, militant, and willing to strike and/or unionize because the nature of the work cultivated tremendous solidarity among the workers. This reality has been demonstrated repeatedly across time and cultures in ports across the seven seas. However, technological changes—namely, containerization—supposedly destroyed this solidarity by dramatically reducing the number of workers while creating far fewer, more-skilled, better-paid workers who supposedly no longer believed in or acted with such solidarity. Enter the second key factor explaining longshore workers' enduring power: their strategic location in the global economy, as marine transport remains absolutely central and which Marc Levinson so brilliantly demonstrated in his work. While some (for instance, Herbert Mills and Bernard Dubbeld) have posited that containerization essentially killed dock unions, rumors of their demise have been greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase one of the most oft-paraphrased Mark Twain lines. How else can we explain why dockers in Oakland, Durban, Istanbul, and Gothenberg all boycotted Israeli ships in the past few years?

One major theme that runs through all four of these books is that longshore workers have held power—more power than most workers and enough power to protect their own interests and even some of their fellow workers. Admittedly, employers, governments, and global capitalism all present tremendous challenges to worker power, but it is not insignificant that dockers continue to wield some, and their experiences, arguably, are suggestive of what other workers can accomplish.

Victoria Johnson brings the tools of a historical sociologist to her analysis of the Seattle (1919) and San Francisco (1934) General Strikes, both of which saw longshore workers playing central roles. Johnson contends that culture was a major, overlooked force in generating these dramatic historical moments—that is, worker power derives from a deeply rooted American political culture. According to her, historians have ignored the central role of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) in these strikes, well beyond its heyday—though she does not say that directly; rather, she claims that working-class radicals promoting “workplace democracy,” generally Wobblies in Seattle and those influenced by Wobbly ideals in San Francisco, have been underappreciated. Johnson claims that socialists and communists have received too much credit for causing and shaping the trajectories of these dramatic general strikes. Instead, she argues, the Wobblies played a central role in promoting working-class radicals' ideas about workplace democracy in Seattle and San Francisco. Perhaps most interestingly, Johnson—remember a (historical) sociologist—says that we must go back to the founding of the United States and the early republic, specifically to Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine, to fully comprehend the thought of twentieth-century proponents of “workplace democracy.” While she never uses the term “Jeffersonian republicanism,” historians will connect her argument to that ideal.Footnote ²

Essentially, Johnson wants to explain why some American workers have engaged in general strikes, incredibly dramatic and militant actions that rarely have occurred in US history.Footnote ³ She asserts that the historiography on these events have misunderstood American workers, who generally are depicted as being “conservative,” meaning supposedly not as class conscious as European workers, or “class conscious,” meaning oriented towards communism. Instead, Johnson believes that American workers who were militant enough to launch general strikes were radical, in a peculiarly American way, because they drew on American cultural and political traditions that promoted local, democratic control of the workplace.Footnote ⁴ She quickly traces these ideals from the Revolution up to the early twentieth-century heirs of this tradition, the Wobblies. She believes that the Seattle and San Francisco general strikers' “emphasis on local democratic control of the workplace was prioritized in contrast to socialist or communist models of change.”Footnote ⁵ While the Wobblies were very influential in Seattle and, indeed, across the Pacific Northwest, Johnson (following Dubofsky and others, although rarely acknowledging any historians of the IWW) believes that the IWW was largely “homegrown.” However, many historians believe it shared much with European anarcho-syndicalism and, I would add, Latin American, Asian, and other regional variations—and had much in common with groups of Italian, Irish, and other immigrants who brought their politics with them to the States.Footnote ⁶

Johnson analyzes Seattle and San Francisco through the lens of republicanism to contend that American workers are neither conservative nor accepting of capitalism and to assert that twentieth-century American workers continued to favor the preindustrial American ideal of the self-governing workshop. This political culture of workplace democracy, which also might be considered ideological, was distinguished by ideals like “the promotion of worker ownership and management,” “participatory democracy and the rejection of centralized authority,” “inclusive industrial unionism,” and “a rhetoric of class conflict” that was producerist rather than Marxist.Footnote ⁷ Johnson, thus, concludes that the Seattle and San Francisco general strikes were radical. At the very end of her book, she returns to these notions to claim that American workers in the twenty-first century must re-embrace the ideals of Jefferson and Paine to counteract the trajectory of contemporary capitalism in the nation. Only if American workers do so will they be able to reenergize the labor movement and reorient America's political economy in a direction that is more egalitarian in terms of the distribution of wealth and power. Perhaps, in the increasingly global, post-Cold War era of capitalism, the origins of worker radicalism matters less, though Johnson might assert that American workers' political culture is distinct.

In comparing these two important moments in US history, Johnson demonstrates how syndicalist—as opposed to communist—in orientation both, in fact, were. Bruce Nelson, of course, covered much of this terrain some years ago in Workers on the Waterfront and, ultimately, her work does not supplant his. In fact, while the summaries of these general strikes are helpful and the comparison worthwhile, it does not add dramatically to our knowledge of either event. She depends upon a tiny handful of sources and apparently misses many others—whether it is ignoring Leon Fink on the Knights or incompletely exploring Bruce Nelson and many others' writings on the ILWU. Johnson's short book is a quick read, and the two chapters describing the general strikes in Seattle and San Francisco are good primers, especially the Seattle chapter. While historians will not find too much new here, Johnson's work is a good reminder never to ignore how culture shapes worker actions and beliefs—that is, worker power. And I would be remiss if I did not compliment Johnson's wonderful choice of titles though, alas, the answer is not forthcoming in the book.

James Fisher's book is a fascinating and richly illustrative look at the dirty underbelly of longshoring in twentieth-century America's most important port, New York City (he also discusses the port towns on the west side of the Hudson River in New Jersey). Many labor historians, whose sympathies often lie with the subjects of their studies, might wish to avoid exploring the issue of corruption, but that simply is not possible, especially “on the waterfront.”Footnote ⁸ Indeed, if the term “corruption” is permanently linked in many Americans' minds with “union,” then the longshore industry and the 1954 film On the Waterfront have played central roles in that process. Admittedly, it is a bit odd that a movie has had such influence; the Teamsters, apparently, need no such film to be the other leading contender for corrupt unions. Thus, to evade this matter is to ignore the proverbial elephant in the room. Hence, Fisher has performed a useful service for labor historians as well as those interested in twentieth-century America, New York City, Irish Americans, the Cold War, and the Catholic Church. Indeed, Fisher's book consciously tackles many historical subjects, and, as a result, this book has a wider import than most whose subject is marine transport.

Fisher is no labor historian, nor does he pretend or aspire to be one, so it is a bit unfair to chastise him for ignoring a number of key issues regarding longshoremen (still an entirely masculine world in the 1940s and 1950s). For that matter, he is not really a historian but, rather, a scholar of Catholics and Catholicism by way of American Studies. Therefore, Fisher does not care to describe the lives of longshore workers, on the job or off. In a sense, Fisher treats longshore workers as objects rather than subjects; not a single one plays a leading role in his book and only a few are mentioned by name or examined in any meaningful way. Instead, the Jesuit “labor priest” Father Peter Corridan is the protagonist—though this book is most definitely nonfiction, it sometimes read like a novel, which is not intended as criticism; the book is well written and engaging. The second-most important figure in the book is Budd Schulberg, who wrote the screenplay for On the Waterfront while Elia Kazan, the film's legendary director, receives scant attention. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Corridan “fed” information about the docks to Schulberg and Malcolm Johnson, a New York City journalist who authored the 1949 Pulitzer Prize-winning “Crime on the Waterfront” series for the New York Sun. Fisher convincingly asserts that, without Corridan, neither Johnson nor Schulberg could have written the brilliant and popular works that they did. Joe Ryan, the ILA “president for life” in the mid-twentieth century features prominently, though what he actually thinks is never examined. Admittedly, knowing Ryan's mind is impossible, as he left behind no papers and allowed no interviews. His union has proven equally challenging for its archives (if they exist) are not open to the public. The ILA is as “closed” as the waterfront world documented in both the film On the Waterfront and Fisher's insightful book. Unfortunately, everyone who writes about the ILA does so without the benefit of many internal ILA sources.Footnote ⁹

Fisher historicizes and analyzes—rescues, he might say—Corridan and Schulberg in order to make his main points: namely, that Father Corridan's bold and idealistic efforts to save the souls (and lives) of the dominant longshore demographic, Irish American Catholics, proved a noble failure. Further, if of less import to labor historians, generations of film historians have utterly misunderstood the legendary and influential On the Waterfront by failing to appreciate Corridan's influence on Schulberg. Thus, the long-accepted wisdom that the film is an ideological defense of Schulberg and Kazan for “naming names” before HUAC is patently wrong because the film was conceived of and a draft of the screenplay was written before these testimonies. Moreover, Schulberg's screenplay, according to Fisher's persuasive book, was driven, in part, by Corridan. Shulberg, like Johnson before him, became a valuable ally in Corridan's “personal crusade” (Fisher's term) to overturn the longstanding, deeply entrenched, corrupt system that oppressed longshoremen on both sides of the Hudson. While Corridan and Schulberg understandably fixate on the evils of the hiring system, the “shape-up,” in fact the shape was not the greatest factor in the longstanding suffering of Irish Catholic dockers. Rather, a dense, nefarious, corrupt, immoral, and entangled web of connections that exploited longshoremen as well as the public and private purse was the primary villain. If Johnson traces a radical tradition in American political culture, Fisher explores different, more selfish and conservative, strands.

Though sympathetic to the many people who remained trapped in its grasp, Fisher identifies a great many tentacles in an octopus that corrupted “the Irish waterfront,” including: the working class itself, the Irish American communities of Manhattan's West Side (West Village, Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen); the powerful, corrupt, thoroughly undemocratic union that was dominated by “King Joe” Ryan and a cohort of other Irish Catholics; layers of (Irish) Roman Catholic bureaucracy that oft protected corrupt, powerful, generous (Irish) Catholic donors and parishioners, and who were at odds with each other—particularly insurgent (Irish) Jesuits like Corridan who believed themselves to be stewards of social justice; corrupt (Irish) politicians in New York City and across the river in Hudson County towns like Hoboken and Jersey City; and (Irish) businessmen who seemed to pull the strings and ultimately dominated the entire game, replete with a “Mr. Big,” Bill McCormick, though really the business-corporate side of this story is sadly underexplored. Obviously, what nearly all of these individuals apparently shared in common, be he a down-and-out longshoreman, Hoboken's mayor, or an archbishop was being Irish American and Roman Catholic. Many hailed from literally the same neighborhoods, same parishes—that is, same milieu. The yarn that Fisher weaves is, ultimately, a tragic one, for it became clear to Corridan that his efforts had failed—though he never publicly admitted it. Indeed, at the very moment that the issue had been raised to truly meteoric heights thanks to the commercial and critical success of the film, the union and its members rejected Corridan—who always had a hard time breaking into the intensely insular world of the working-class Irish waterfront neighborhoods—despite being from a similar background himself. In a series of mysterious and confusing twists and turns that continue to define the port of New York-New Jersey, members of the ILA resisted both Corridan's and the AFL's efforts at “reform.” Perhaps it is surprising that Corridan, a born-and-bred Manhattan working-class Irish Catholic, was seen as an outsider “on the Irish waterfront.” Nevertheless, Fisher contends that even Corridan could not crack the intersecting webs that tied working-class Irish dockers on both sides of the Hudson to the ILA, Big Business, city and state politicians, and the Catholic Church hierarchy. Fisher contends that Corridan was seen as an outsider because, as a priest, he was supposed to remain in the parish church, not invade the intensely insular world of docks; thus, Corridan was perceived as crossing an invisible yet inviolable line by getting involved in the lives—as opposed to saving the souls—of his flock. Though perhaps Fisher misunderstands the nature of being working class and/or labor on the waterfront—and, thus, disrespects the folks he hints sympathy with–this essay will not examine Fisher's and Corridan's views of working-class Catholic Irish Americans.

Historians of longshore labor, marine transport, and ports will regret Fisher's very tight focus on the port of New York-New Jersey, resulting in a failure to explore some of the crucial dynamics of power that longshore workers possess(ed) and desperately fought to hold on to. There are almost no references to other ports—Atlantic or otherwise—not even for comparison as far as corruption, ILA, wages, conditions, etc. For instance, there was a Jesuit “labor priest” in Philadelphia, Father Comey, but the reader never learns such facts in this book; it is simply beyond Fisher's range of interests. Similarly, Fisher writes almost nothing on what it was like to be a longshoreman: at work, in his neighborhood(s), or from his perspective(s). Basically, Fisher writes almost nothing from the point of view of a West Side Irish American Catholic dockworker and mentions but a few specific workers. Oddly, this absence appears to reaffirm one of Fisher's themes, the “code of silence” among Irish Catholics who lived and worked along the Hudson River. Fisher conducted not a single interview with a former longshoreman, and, hence, their notions of community are absent. Instead, Fisher stands on the shoulders of—but never engages—Bruce Nelson, Colin Davis, Howard Kimeldorf, Cal Winslow, and Risa Faussette—all of whom have written ably on the history of New York City waterfront workers.Footnote ¹⁰

As previously mentioned, this book was written as a tragedy in which, despite Corridan's dramatic efforts to reform the waterfront, the ILA retained control of the workforce and remained corrupt. Nevertheless, this book is very well written, passionate, and interesting. Reading about how a Jewish screenwriter from Hollywood and a Greek Orthodox filmmaker crafted a brilliant movie about working-class Catholics in New York with the help of a crusading labor priest is enjoyable. However, Fisher's book is the outlier in this review essay as a book that, ostensibly, is about waterfront workers but really is not. Fisher would have benefited from William Mello's 2010 book, New York Longshoremen: Class and Power on the Docks. Mello convincingly argues that New York's rank-and-file longshoremen, so often characterized as “conservative,” repeatedly engaged in wildcat strikes from the 1950s into the 1970s to maintain power and jobs. Apparently, they did have a good understanding of power—how they might lose it (containerization), how to hold onto it (collective action), and who were their allies (not the ILA leadership, as many of their strikes were “illegal” and squashed by US and ILA presidents declaring “cooling-off” periods). Of course, Fisher is interested in neither containerization nor, really, the transformation of longshore labor and working class port communities, which occurred in the following decade; primarily, Fisher focuses on the insular Irish American Catholic world of greater New York. However, in insisting on a narrow gaze, he misses much of the waterfront world, including the positive aspects of working-class solidarity.

Harvey Schwartz has crafted a book that straddles the challenging divide between writing history for academics and the general public. Both sorts of readers will benefit tremendously from this work about the ILWU. For professional historians, Solidarity Stories offers literally dozens of oral histories examining the work, lives, and union activities of longshore, agriculture, and warehouse workers; precisely the sorts of interviews that Fisher's work would have benefited from immensely. These interviews provide rich and varied primary-source material for scholars working on the history of the ILWU, maritime world, politics, Pacific coast port cities, and intersections of labor, ethnicity, and race. For others, this book does a surprisingly good job of detailing much of the history of an important, albeit unusually progressive if hardly consistent, union. If someone wanted to read a single book on the ILWU, one could do far worse than Solidarity Stories.

Schwartz, an oral historian at San Francisco State University and the ILWU's Oral History Collection, has compiled, edited, and (in many cases) personally conducted interviews with more than 200 members of the ILWU. While he holds a PhD in history and has authored several other books on the ILWU, Schwartz's loyalties lie unapologetically in the ILWU fold—having worked for the ILWU for years. No matter, Schwartz ably applies the ethics of a historian in conducting and presenting this research.

One of the book's more interesting themes explores the incredible diversity, broadly defined, within the union. Interview subjects include African Americans, Asian Americans, European Americans, and Latinos. Some interviews reach back into the 1920s, and a few take readers into the early twenty-first century, though most focus on the middle third of the twentieth century. Most of those interviewed are men (not surprising, given the types of jobs), though a few women are featured. While some important union leaders are interviewed, the majority are local organizers and rank-and-file activists, in keeping with the book's implicit thesis on the union's democratic tradition. Most interviewed worked along the shore, but some labored in warehouses or on plantations. While the San Francisco Bay area remains the heart of the ILWU, the book also covers San Pedro-Long Beach (the largest port on the coast since the 1980s), Portland, Seattle-Tacoma, and Vancouver, British Columbia, as well as the ports of Hawaii. Given the centrality of East Asian industrial production to North American markets, America's Pacific coast ports and, hence, the ILWU remain integral to the trans-Pacific and global economies.

Although the book's primary purpose is not the work process, as a matter of course, many interviewees describe their trades, before and after the union's ascendance. While not breaking new ground, Solidarity Stories reminds the reader of how physically hard and dangerous longshoring was before workers had a powerful union to protect them from employer exploitation. Of particular interest is how the ILWU demanded, won, and holds onto a union-controlled hiring hall although the story is more complicated than described in the book. Also of great relevance is how the ILWU retained power despite the technological revolution of containerization that easily could have destroyed it, as new technologies directly contributed to the decline of other unions. This issue also is more complex and the outcome more contested—not only did a great many workers lose their jobs (though they received financial compensation), an argument can be made that the change in the work process itself irrevocably weakened longshore worker power and solidarity. Herb Mills, a former leader of Local 10 in the Bay area, has spent many years saying as much, and this important matter will be discussed further below. Readers also get tastes of warehouse workers (organized by the ILWU's famed “march inland,” away from the docks, in the late 1930s and 1940s) and agricultural labor (in Hawaii, where all agricultural commodities were shipped to the mainland). Two entire chapters cover these subjects, and prove among the book's most interesting because the actors are dynamic and their histories less known. Of course, that Pacific coast dockers saw the desirability of organizing other workers who belonged to related global industries, in transportation and agriculture, further demonstrates that the ILWU appreciated, prior to the 1950s, how and where power resided.Footnote ¹¹

Schwartz celebrates the union for being more democratic, committed to local autonomy, politically engaged, and socially progressive than most other unions in the United States, past or present. While the book begins and ends with interviews of the union's legendary leader, Harry Bridges, readers will gain a deeper understanding of how and why the union evolved from other interviews. Among many fascinating ones are those with Sam Kagel, who worked in various capacities in the industry, and Bill Chester, a long-time black activist in the San Francisco Bay Area. The ILWU's commitment to racial and ethnic inclusion comes through in this book (of course, the book was created by a partisan), but Schwartz does not ignore the challenges of organizing America's diverse working class. He even highlights one of the best-known conflicts, when hundreds of LA dockers, overwhelmingly African American, lost their jobs and union membership after the Second World War; he also explores the central role of Mexican Americans in that port. Still, Schwartz's favorable view of the ILWU is clear—though his conclusions are not unreasonable, given seventy-five years of racially progressive policies. By contrast, gender is far less explored: There are few women in the union, and masculinity as a theme is not probed in any depth. Curiously, one of the most interesting interviews is with the long-time president of the ILWU women's auxiliary in Coos Bay, Oregon.

Most who know about the ILWU appreciate that it is an unusual union; however, not everyone in the ILWU was—or is—as progressive or militant as this book's narrative implicitly suggests. There are so-called conservative longshoremen: the ones not pushing a social justice agenda, mostly concerned with their (ever-rising) wages, or looking to get jobs for their sons and brothers. While they support the ILWU and believe in solidarity, they do so more for private, individualistic reasons. These folks make brief appearances, but never directly; rather, they are referred to by those being interviewed as conservative and, generally, are “overcome.” The book would have been stronger if it more fully explored such internal divisions, which persist to this day. For instance, even in the supposedly most militant and progressive branch, Local 10, which covers the ports of San Francisco and Oakland, there were always challenges from the Right to Harry Bridges as well as from varied strains of Leftists; of course, some on the “right” in the ILWU are still to the left of many Americans. Some ILWU members wanted to use their power to aid other workers in need, while others wanted to use power to benefit themselves. Nevertheless, the prevailing, left-leaning nature of the members and union explain its ongoing commitment to various progressive, international causes, from opposition to fascism in the 1930s and 1940s, to opposition to military dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s and 80s, to sympathizing with victims of South African and Palestinian “apartheid” in the 1980s and beyond.

While the port-by-port organizational approach is logical, the result is that some key issues are obscured—most notably the plunge in the number of longshore workers due to containerization. Obviously, there are numerous parallels; coal mining comes to mind as another industry where production and productivity have increased but the number of workers has dropped. A chapter devoted exclusively to the still-controversial (in ILWU circles at least) Mechanization and Modernization (“M & M”) agreements that facilitated the transition in how cargo is unloaded would have been invaluable. Rather than attempting to prevent what was arguably inevitable (technological change), the ILWU negotiated, using its militancy and strength, a transition that likely resulted in the union holding onto a not-insignificant amount of power and enriching remaining members—albeit at the cost of declining numbers.Footnote ¹² By contrast, Marc Levinson seriously explores this matter in his vital book, The Box, demonstrating that mechanization destroyed America's greatest port, New York City, when cargo operations moved to the New Jersey side of the Hudson; there, too, the ILA managed to hold on, ultimately winning a deal somewhat similar to the ILWU, called “Guaranteed Annual Income.”Footnote ¹³

A related subject that would have been useful to “interface” with is the decline of organized labor in the United States. Longshore is a notable exception to this rule, with the ILWU (and even ILA) remaining relatively strong, if tiny; alas, there are no interviews that offer direct insights into why longshore workers have held on better than most blue-collar workers to their unions. Clearly, dockers and their unions still wield power because they appreciate the possibilities of solidarity as well as their strategic niche in the global economy even though the industry has been transformed and traditional working-class port communities have disappeared. Indeed, even if Father Corridan had won his crusade, Manhattan's West Side piers—and, neighboring working-class strongholds-were doomed. So, too, was San Francisco's working class South of Market area, as containerization drove cargo to the East Bay port of Oakland in the 1960s and 1970s.Footnote ¹⁴

Suzan Erem and E. Paul Durrenberger have written a powerful, partisan, timely, and essential book for those interested in issues connecting labor (not just longshore labor, not even just blue-collar work), political power, and the rapidly changing global economy. On the Global Waterfront: The Fight to Free the Charleston 5 uses a clash on the docks in Charleston, South Carolina, to investigate the possibility that organized labor still has some say in how—and if—their jobs will disappear due to globalization. The authors examine the dramatic and successful efforts of a small group of workers, largely African American, in resisting a relatively small Danish shipping company that tries to shift to a nonunion stevedore firm in the port of Charleston in order to reduce labor costs and undermine one of the strongest black, working-class institutions in the city and state. Risking their jobs and the possibility of significant jail time, they stood up against powerful, transnational corporations, the local and state police, court system, and political power structure in the notoriously antiunion, “right-to-work” state that also has a disturbing and pervasive history of white supremacy. This event became a news story for one twenty-four-hour cycle of cable television, featuring perhaps a hundred black and white workers “rioting” and supposedly attacking a much whiter, very heavily armed group of 600 law enforcement officers. Supposedly, the police were brought in to suppress violence, despite the fact that there had been little in the way of disturbances on the picket line. But one could argue that they were really there to incite violence rather than to prevent it.

Among those longshoremen injured was the local's president, Ken Riley, who became the leader of this struggle and, essentially, the protagonist in this work of nonfiction. Meanwhile, those involved in the court case, known as the Charleston 5, spent several years defending themselves from felony riot charges and are largely invisible as individuals in the book. The authors convincingly argue the charges against the five were driven by a South Carolina attorney general seeking to advance his Republican gubernatorial candidacy by bashing unions (and also African Americans in the “big city” of Charleston) in a state known for its very conservative politics and troubled race relations. Meanwhile, Riley and his fellow members of ILA Local 1422 found a host of allies in places they never had thought to look before: the ILWU (activists in Local 10 feature prominently in this story), a handful of fighting progressives inside the AFL-CIO establishment, and militant dock unionists in Sweden, Spain, Australia, and elsewhere across the globe; these union longshore activists were under no illusions about the tremendous threat to their jobs, earnings, and power that globalization and containerization, fully embraced by shipping corporations the world over, have ushered in. Allies provided most of the money, much of the organizational skills, and the willingness to apply direct action at a few key moments—for example, when militant Spanish longshore workers threatened to not unload any further ships from the offending Danish company unless it resumed hiring union dockers in Charleston. Riley and this ragtag, underresourced, yet fiery movement also had to confront the seemingly far more powerful city and state political machines. As Charleston rarely features in historical accounts of (maritime) America after the colonial or antebellum eras, it is refreshing to read about a port other than New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles; in fact, Levinson notes that, while many historic ports have suffered tremendous declines in the age of containerization, others—including Charleston—have seen their fortunes rise. Of course, while the authors focus much vitriol at the state attorney general, clearly the main issue is the power of multinational shipping corporations that have little regard for the needs of a few hundred workers in a single port for “the ship must sail on time” and at the lowest possible costs in labor; that is, although local and state forces are significant players in this story, ultimately the authors' gaze is fixated on changes in global trade that threaten to undermine worker power generally and longshore unions particularly.Footnote ¹⁵

Clearly, Erem, a journalist, and Durrenberger, an anthropologist, chose to tell this story because it ends in something of a triumph, as they see it. The “Charleston 5” are not sent to jail on felony charges and, perhaps more importantly, the local union forced the Danish shipping company to abandon its contract with a small South Carolina stevedoring firm that was trying to expand its business by running non-union piers. Of course, as historians of labor and working-class movements might guess, along the way Riley and many members of his union came to realize that they had forged another link in the chain of labor solidarity and were becoming more empowered in the struggle for dignity and maintaining power. In a very real sense, the subject of this book is a legacy of the failures of Father Corridan to wrest control of the ILA away from its corrupt, Irish American-dominated, NYC leadership. Literally fifty years later, longshoremen in Charleston are combating not only antiworker, antiunion shipping companies and governments, but also a hidebound ILA leadership, unwilling or unable to adapt and—not atypically—seemingly unconcerned about the ever-growing pressures on union workers in their industry and worldwide. Indeed, ILA leadership again seems content to rest, benefiting from the Guaranteed Annual Income won in the 1960s due to rank-and-file power, instead of actively working to protect and expand influence.Footnote ¹⁶

In contrast, Riley became much more active in a rank-and-file movement called the Longshore Workers Coalition (LWC) that is not unlike the Teamsters for a Democratic Union; in fact, port-by-port the LWC has gained control of numerous locals, especially in the US South Atlantic which, not coincidentally, is more heavily African American in membership than the US North Atlantic ports. If the ILA has any hope in maintaining the relatively privileged and well-paying jobs in Atlantic and Gulf coast ports, the success of the LWC is vital.Footnote ¹⁷

While Schwartz's book is unapologetically prounion, Erem and Durrenberger are unapologetically political. They believe that the story of the Charleston 5 and their revitalized, grassroots local union's efforts to protect their jobs and members from powerful, global economic and political forces offer all sorts of lessons for workers in the United States and worldwide. And, in this author's opinion, they are not wrong. The enormous expansion of global trade, facilitated by technologies like the Internet as well as containerization, has dramatically changed the nature of work and labor unions in recent decades. Generally speaking, corporations have pushed these changes and benefited disproportionately from them. Unions, as most know, have been whipsawed by the movement of the US political system rightward—resulting in the “free trade” mantra, and, the signing of trade deals that make it easier for corporations to move production to low-wage nations, among other changes. Hence, examples of unions creatively and actively resisting—or, more precisely, seeking to have influence upon—these changes must be studied and even championed by those who see the decline of organized labor as a major problem for working-class peoples and democratic societies at large. Thus, this book will not be loved by those who believe that objectivity should be “prime directive” for scholars. Instead, like Steven K. Ashby and C.J. Hawking's recent, equally powerful investigation of the failed Staley lockout in mid-1990s Illinois, the authors of this book hope the example of the Charleston 5 will be studied by people far beyond the readership of ILWCH.Footnote ¹⁸ That said, it should be studied by ILWCH readers, too.

Another direction that would be useful for more historians and other scholars of workers—especially longshore workers—to take is somewhat obvious: Given the inherent nature of the shipping industry, scholars must go beyond single port studies that focus inward on a single nation's history. As ever more scholars embrace comparative and/or transnational methods to anchor their studies, those who study marine transport workers would be well advised to embrace, even spearhead, this effort. While this notion is valid for Early Modern and earlier times, as evidenced by the now well-established field of Atlantic history, it is especially true for those who study twentieth and twenty-first century labor and business history.Footnote ¹⁹

In particular, the centrality of global supply chains offers twenty-first century transportation workers opportunities to remain powerful and relevant. If transport workers can organize themselves across the many boundaries that traditionally have weakened working-class peoples, including ethnicity/race, gender, geography, and nationality, they might challenge corporations that exploit workers' many differences and have more influence with governments. An increasing number of scholars have come to appreciate the necessity of transportation workers organizing along the entire supply chain; workers have demonstrated the ability to take advantage of their strategic positions in the global supply chain—ahead of academics attempting to understand and chronicle the issue. While not his purpose, Marc Levison implicitly raised the potential for workers, as did Andrew Herod. More recently, scholars including Edna Bonacich and Jake B. Wilson, Richard Appelbaum, and Nelson Lichtenstein, as well as Richard Allen, all have explored different aspects of the twenty-first-century version of the brave new world. Among the books reviewed in this essay, Harvey Schwartz's provides the historical precedent, when the ILWU initiated its “march inland” in the 1930s and 1940s, moving from the workers who loaded and unloaded ships to the warehouses that contained these same goods, successfully lining up tens of thousands of workers; in fact, Schwartz's dissertation and first book are the only lengthy analyses of this aspect of the ILWU. Of course, due to containerization, warehouse workers have been moved ever further from the union-controlled and spatially-limited ports; these warehouse workers are the new front lines in efforts by workers to (re)gain some power and wealth and, arguably, are where transportation workers and their unions will succeed or fail. As Suzan Erem and Paul Durrenberger demonstrate, maritime transport workers are fully aware of the necessity of and obstacles to organizing globally in the twenty-first century; at least sometimes, organized longshore workers have proven capable of matching the forces of global transportation corporations.Footnote ²⁰ Longshore workers' continuing and potential power and influence in global transportation seem to contradict the notion that unions will continue to fade in power and numbers. Those who study these subjects are well positioned to offer commentary on matters of grave import about the past, as well as for the twenty-first century.