Contractually Sanctioned Job Action & Workers' Control

I know some of you must be thinking: "Jeez, I can't believe you people. I can't think of anything more boring than reading an article on labor-management relations in some damn scholarly journal!" And that IS the way it would seem. But--I PROMISE--if you take the time to get through the first part about the tired old theories of the three main schools of American labor historians... which is VERY DRY... YOU WILL BE REWARDED FOR YOUR EFFORT. You'll never look at your job, or the Union Hiring Hall, in the same way again! This article may just change your life!

Even though this article is really obscure--up until recently, it was just gathering about an inch of dust on a library shelf--in our opinion, "Contractually Sanctioned Job Action" is the GRAND-DADDY of all educational reading about how the ILWU became so strong. It explains, in detail, step-by-step, HOW the heroes of the Big Strike of '34 built the strongest union in America. They stuck together and used workers' unity on the job to achieve all the rights we have today. These guys were geniuses! They built on every little success and failure, and by tight coordination of their beefs and a determination to back up all their brothers when it came to the employers, they created a legal framework that still allows certain workers (as in US!) the greatest freedom of any American workers!

In our humble opinion, this 30-page masterpiece should be required reading for every West Coast longshore worker--registered or casual! We should all study it carefully, especially now, and learn from how the Old Timers handled their business on the job and conducted themselves at the union hall. If we could start to act like they did then, and think like they did, maybe, JUST MAYBE, we'll be able to pull it off and keep this Contract and this Union going on for another generation!

Labor history isn't just interesting reading, or a cute hobby.... It's a guide to action for the (near) future.

Okay, okay. By now you must think I'm really out of my mind. If not, you probably just want the link to the article so you can read it for yourself...

But before I give you that, I should at least tell you a little bit about the guys who wrote it:

Herb Mills retired from the San Francisco Ship Clerks' Local 34, in the late '80s. He graduated from the University of Michigan, and in 1963 became a San Francisco longshoreman. Between 1963 and 1985, when he transferred to the Clerks, he served Local 10 for some time as Business Agent and Secretary-Treasurer. During the same time, he earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of numerous articles on the West Coast longshore industry, and has published dissertations on waterfront labor-management relations. Between 1972 and 1978, as B.A., he led Local 10 in a determined and ultimately victorious struggle to have deadly asbestos banned from the docks. He lives in Berkeley, CA.

David Wellman is Professor of Community Studies in the Politics Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Prior to that, he earned his Ph.D. in sociology (1974) from UC Berkeley, where he also served as Associate Research Sociologist at the Institute for the Study of Social Change at Berkeley. His books include Portraits of White Racism (1977), and The Union Makes Us Strong: Radical Unionism on the San Francisco Waterfront (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

The article that follows will give you a taste of what's in store if you get a copy of Prof. Wellman's book, and read it. Wellman was given the rare opportunity to actually work as a longshoreman in Local 10, in order to conduct his research and prepare his book. He had expected to write a book just like many labor historians had, lamenting how the combative trade unionism of the type that existed in America during the 1930s and '40s--and which had ended some of the greatest abuses of working people, and won amazing social gains for the whole population--a decent life and a future for their kids--had died. What he found, though, was that--on the West Coast waterfront, at least--the exact opposite was true. In the ILWU, militant rank-and-file unionism was the norm, not the exception to the rule!

We can't recommend this article, or Prof. Wellman's book, strongly enough!

So, with that, we give you...

Contractually Sanctioned Job Action and Workers' Control: The Case of the San Francisco Longshoremen