27. James Felt, chairman, City Planning Commission, to O’Connor, September 23, 1959, Wagner Papers, Reel 40508, Frame 691; City of New York Department of City Planning, “Redevelopment of Lower Manhattan East River Piers,” September 1959, Wagner Papers, Reel 4058, Frame 693; Moses to Felt, September 29, 1959, Wagner Papers, Reel 40508, Frame 688; O’Connor to Board of Estimate, November 25, 1959, Wagner Papers, Reel 40531, Frame 2179. Moses, still a powerful figure in the city and the region during this period, appears to have had no interest in freight transportation. The port, maritime affairs, and freight transportation in general receive no mention in Robert A. Caro’s authoritative biography, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York, 1974), and Moses’s own memoir says nothing about shipping beyond the observation that, in the late 1940s, “[o]ur magnificent port was literally dying.” See Moses’s Public Works: A Dangerous Trade (New York, 1970), p. 894. According to Guy Tozzoli, who knew Moses for many years, Moses was very interested in autos and passenger transportation, but had no interest in port-related matters or in the freight-handling problems of New York businesses. Author’s interview, New York, January 13, 2004.
28. Condit, The Port of New York, 2:346.
29. U.S. Department of Commerce, Annual Report of the Federal Maritime Board and Maritime Administration, 1957 (Washington, DC, 1957), p. 12; PNYA, Minutes of the Commissioners, February 14, 1957, p. 98, Meyner Papers, Box 44; PNYA, Weekly Report to the Commissioners, November 15, 1965, Doig Files; “Full-Scale Container Ship Proves Itself,” 6; U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Roll-On, Roll-Off Sea Transportation (Washington, DC, 1957), p. 9; “Propeller Club Annual Convention,” Marine Engineering/Log (November 1958), pp. 64–65.
30. PNYA, “Report on Port Authority Operation of Port Newark & Newark Airport, January 1, 1960-December 31, 1960”; Chinitz, Freight and the Metropolis, p. 156.
31. Elizabeth officiais protested that the Port Authority was violating a 1951 agreement that it would not condemn land in Elizabeth without the city’s consent. See PNYA, Weekly Report to the Commissioners, March 31, 1956; letter, Austin J. Tobin to Elizabeth mayor Nicholas LaCorte, May 21, 1956; New Jersey governor Robert B. Meyner to Elizabeth city attorney Jacob Pfeferstein, June 4, 1956; Memo, Francis A. Mulhearn, PNYA legal department to Tobin, June 29, 1956, all in Doig Files. On the differing reactions to the container, see PNYA, Minutes of Committee on Construction, March 26, 1958, Meyner Papers, Box 44; O’Connor address on Marine and Aviation Day, May 23, 1961, Wagner Papers, Reel 40532, Frame 325; “Creation of a Container Port,” Via—Port of New York, Special Issue: Transatlantic Transport Preview (1965), p. 31; Anthony J. Tozzoli and John S. Wilson, “The Elizabeth, N.J. Port Authority Marine Terminal,” Civil Engineering, January 1969, pp. 34–39.
32. New York Department of Marine and Aviation, press release, January 23, 1961, Wagner Papers, Reel 40532, Frame 357; Remarks by Mayor Robert F. Wagner, August 30, 1962, Wagner Papers, Reel 40532, Frame 457; Walter Hamshar, “Face-Lift for the Waterfront,” New York Herald Tribune, November 2, 1963; “NY Port Development Scored,” JOC, December 23, 1963; New York City Planning Commission, “The Port of New York: Proposals for Development” (1964), pp. 8, 13, and plate 2; Minutes of New York City Council on Port Development and Promotion, November 18, 1963, Wagner Papers, Reel 40532, Frame 728; “Report on Recommendations by the Steering Committee to the Committee for Alleviating Truck Congestion and Delay at the Waterfront of the City of New York,” October 7, 1965, Wagner Papers, Reel 40532, Frame 978.
33. King to Tobin, November 8, 1965; PNYA, Minutes of the Commissioners, November 10, 1965; PNYA, press release, November 15, 1965; PNYA, Minutes of the Commissioners, September 8, 1966; PNYA, transcript of “New Jersey Observations,” WNDT-TV, November 15, 1965, all in Doig files; “One Dispute at a Time,” NYT, July 12, 1966.
34. PNYA, Annual Report, 1996, p. 14; First National City Bank, “The Port of New York: Challenge and Opportunity,” June 1967, pp. 27, 30; Longshore News, October-November 1966, p. 4,
35. Edward C. Burks, “Jersey Facilities Set Port Agency Pace,” NYT, May 11, 1975; Edith Evans Asbury, “Port Agency Scored on Jersey Project,” NYT, July 17, 1966; PANYNJ, Foreign Trade 1976, p. 12.
36. Brown to Lindsay, May 12, 1966, in Mayor John V. Lindsay Papers, NYMA, Reel 45087, Frame 1560; PNYA, “The 1970 Outlook for Deep Sea Container Services (New York, 1967),” p. 2; PNYA, Container Shipping: Full Ahead (New York, 1967); “Containers Widen Their World,” Business Week, January 7, 1967; George Home, “Container Revolution, Hailed by Many, Feared,” NYT, September 22, 1968; memo, Halberg to Brown, May 11, 1966, Lindsay Papers, Reel 45087, Frame 1561.
37. Halberg to Deputy Mayor Robert W. Sweet, September 29, 1967, in Lindsay Papers, Department of Marine and Aviation, Reel 45087, Frame 1653; Longshore News, April 1967, p. 4, November 1967, p. 4, October 1968, p. 1, and October 1969, p. 1; Werner Bamberger, “A 90-Second Depot for Containerships Studied,” NYT, December 1, 1966; Paul F. Van Wicklen, “Elizabeth: The Port of New York’s Prototype for the Container Era” (manuscript prepared for Ports and Terminals, April 28, 1969); memo, Patrick F. Crossman, commissioner of economic development, to Lindsay, April 2, 1970, in Lindsay Papers, Confidential Subject Files, Reel 45208, Frame 707; Lindsay to Tobin, June 29, 1970, in Lindsay Papers, Confidential Subject Files, Reel 45208, Frame 668. The proposed vertical terminal for two thousand containers was developed by a New York company called Speed-Park Inc.; see R. D. Fielder, “Container Storage and Handling,” Fairplay, January 5, 1967, p. 31.
38. Joseph P. Goldberg, “U.S. Longshoremen and Port Development,” in Port Planning and Development as Related to Problems of U.S. Ports and the U.S. Coastal Environment, ed. Eric Schenker and Harry C. Brockel (Cambridge, MD, 1974), pp. 76–78; Containerisation International Yearbook 1974 (London, 1974), p. 76; Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, Annual Report, various years; County Business Patterns, 1964, 34–91, and County Business Patterns, 1973, pp. 34–111.
39. Condit, The Port of New York, 1:346; Bill D. Ross, “The New Port Newark Is Prospering,” NYT, December 12, 1973; Goldberg, “U.S. Longshoremen and Port Development,” p. 78; David F. White, “New York Harbor Tries a Comeback,” New York, October 16, 1978, p. 75; Richard Phalon, “Port Jersey Development Could Cut Brooklyn Jobs,” NYT, January 14, 1972; New York City Planning Commission, The Waterfront, p. 35; William DiFazio, Longshoremen: Community and Resistance on the Brooklyn Waterfront (South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey, 1985), pp. 34–35.
40. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population and Housing 1960 (Washington, DC, 1962), Report 104, Part I, and 1970 Census of Population and Housing (Washington, DC., 1972), New York SMSA, Part I. Tract boundaries in 1970 were not identical to those in 1960, so definitive conclusions about economic change in small geographic areas are possible only in scattered instances. Housing data from New York City Planning Commission, “New Dwelling Units Completed in 1975,” Mayor Abraham Beame Papers, NYMA, Departmental Correspondence, City Planning Commission, Reel 61002, Frame 167.
41. County Business Patterns, 1964, 1967, and 1976, Part 34.
42. By the late 1970s, according to one estimate, trucking a container from the waterfront to the railroad yard cost $85 to $120 in Brooklyn, but only $21 in New Jersey; see White, “New York Harbor Tries a Comeback,” p. 78. After adjusting for differences in the industrial mix, Edgar M. Hoover and Raymond Vernon found that plants in the New York region built between 1945 and 1956 occupied 4,550 square feet of land per worker, compared to 1,040 square feet in plants built prior to 1922; they also calculated that taxes on industries in big-city locations were much higher than in other parts of the New York region. See Anatomy of a Metropolis (Cambridge, MA, 1959), pp. 31, 57–58. Factory relocation data are taken from Marilyn Rubin, Ilene Wagner, and Pearl Kamer, “Industrial Migration: A Case Study of Destination by City-Suburban Origin within the New York Metropolitan Area,” Journal of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association 6 (1978): 417–437
.
43. Ellen M. Snyder-Grenier, Brooklyn! An Illustrated History (Philadelphia, 1996), pp. 152–163; “Red Hook,” in The Columbia Gazeteer of North America, 2000 on-line edition; Finlay, Work on the Waterfront, p. 61; Richard Harris, “The Geography of Employment and Residence in New York since 1950,” in Dual City: Restructuring New York, ed. John Mollenkopf and Manual Castells (New York, 1992), p. 133; New York State Department of Labor, Population and Income Statistics; Brian J. Godfrey, “Restructuring and Decentralization in a World City,” Geographical Review (thematic issue, American Urban Geography) 85 (1995): 452.
Chapter 6
Union Disunion
1. New York Shipping Association, “Proposed Revision of General Cargo Agreement for the Period October 1, 1954 to September 30, 1956,” October 20, 1954, and “Proposed Revision of the General Cargo Agreement for the Period October 1, 1954 to September 30, 1956,” December 28, 1954, both in ILA files, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, New York University, Collection 55, Box 1.
2. Information on the ILA’s relations with McLean comes from author’s interviews with Thomas W. Gleason, New York, September 29, 1992, and with Guy F. Tozzoli, New York, January 14, 2004. For background on ILA concerns during this period, see Jensen, Strife on the Waterfront, pp. 173–83; Philip Ross, “Waterfront Labor Response to Technological Change: A Tale of Two Unions,” Labor Law Journal 21, no. 7 (1970): 400; and “General Cargo Agreement Negotiated by the New York Shipping Association Inc. with the International Longshoremen’s Association (IND) for the Port of Greater New York and Vicinity, October 1, 1956-September 30, 1959,” in Jensen Papers, Collection 4096, Box 5.
The Waterfront Commission was seeking to change hiring procedures in the port to eliminate the corruption that came from shape-up. In general, employers hired twenty-one-man gangs rather than individual workers. Each pier (or each employer in Port Newark, where there were no traditional piers) had one or more “regular” gangs that had first call on work. If additional men were needed on a given day, the employer would call for “extra” gangs, with the rules for determining assignment of extra gangs varying greatly in different sections of the port. Pan-Atlantic, for example, had eight “regular” gangs, four Negro and four white. As there was not enough work for all regular gangs every day, a “regular” gang on one pier might also be a “regular extra” gang at another pier if work was available. Employers wanted the ability to choose among available “extra” gangs, but the ILA objected that employers would favor younger workers, leaving gangs with older longshoremen without work. The issue was an extremely difficult one for the union. Newark and parts of Brooklyn had arrangements to equalize earnings among gangs, and union leaders in those areas objected strongly to any attempts to standardize hiring throughout the port, as the Waterfront Commission sought. Manhattan, Jersey City, and Hoboken locals appear to have been much more willing to reach agreement with the commission. Despite the intensity of concern, the ILA does not appear to have had much success in equalizing earnings; of the six gangs that worked for Pan-Atlantic between October 1956 and September 1957, one had average earnings of more than $6,000, two had average earnings of $4,500 to $4,999, and one had average earnings of less than $3,500. See transcript of Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor union-management conferences on seniority issues in ILA District 1 Papers, Kheel Center, Catherwood Library, Cornell University, Collection 5261, Box 1. Wage data are in New York Shipping Association, “Port-Wide Survey of Gang Earnings,” September 12, 1958, in Jensen Papers, Collection 4067, Box 13.
The ILA was not formally segregated in the Port of New York, but there were two identifiably “Negro” locals, Local 968 in Brooklyn and Local 1233 in Newark. The Brooklyn local never succeeded in controlling its own pier, and its leaders complained that employers discriminated against Negroes in hiring extra gangs; see the testimony of Thomas Fauntleroy, business agent of Local 968, “In the Matter of the Arbitration between ILA-Independent, and Its Affiliated Locals, and New York Shipping Association,” September 29, 1958, in Jensen Papers, Collection 4096, Box 5. In 1959, Local 968 merged into the large Local 1814. The Newark local fared better, because, unlike the situation in New York City, Newark custom did not give priority to any local or gangs. Individual gangs were identified in Waterfront Commission records by codes such as “I” (Italian), “N” (Negro), and “S” (Spanish). See P. A. Miller, Jr., “Current Hiring Customs and Practices in All Areas in the Port of New York,” Waterfront Commission, December 20, 1955, in Jensen Papers, Collection 4067, Box 14. On race relations on the New York docks, see Rubin, The Negro in the Longshore Industry, pp. 59–69, and Nelson, Divided We Stand, pp. 79–86.
3. New York Shipping Association, “Proposals for Renewal of the General Cargo Agreement Submitted by the New York Shipping Association, Inc., to the I.L.A. (Ind.),” October 29, 1956; ILA Locals 1418 and 1419 proposal, September 5, 1956; New Orleans Steamship Association counterproposal, October 1, 1956; Board of Inquiry Created by Executive Order No. 10689, “Report to the President on the Labor Dispute Involving Longshoremen and Associated Occupations in the Maritime Industry on the Atlantic and Gulf Coast,” November 24, 1956, all in ILA files, Collection 55, Box 1, Folder “Agreement, Negotiations, & Strikes, June-Dec. 1956, 1 of 2.”
4. McLean Industries, Annual Report, 1958, p. 4; Pacific Maritime Association, Monthly Research Bulletin, January 1959; “Hopes Dim for Accord between Dock Union, New York Shippers, Pacts Expire Tonight,” Wall Street Journal, September 26, 1959. Field comment in Jensen, Strife on the Waterfront, p. 228.
5. NYT, November 18, 1958; and November 27, 1958; Port of New York Labor Relations Committee press release, December 17, 1958, in Jensen Papers, Collection 4067, Box 13.
6. Jacques Nevard, “I.L.A. Demands Six-Hour Day and Curbs on Automation,” NYT, August 11, 1959; Ross, “Waterfront Labor Response,” p. 401.
7. Jack Turcott, “Pier Strike Ties Up E. Coast, Spurs Revolt,” New York Daily News, October 2, 1959; Jensen, Strife on the Waterfront, pp. 235–247.
8. Jensen, Strife on the Waterfront, pp. 247–250; “Dock Union, Shippers Sign Agreement on Labor Contract,” Wall Street Journal, December 4, 1959. Barnett’s comment appears in New York Shipping Association, “Progress Report 1959,” p. 5, and his views were echoed in Walter Hamshar, “I.L.A. Container Pact Gives N.Y. Cargo Lead,” Herald Tribune, January 3, 1960; Jacques Nevard, “Port Gains Noted in New Pier Pact,” NYT, January 3, 1960.
9. Jensen, Strife on the Waterfront, pp. 250–253. Industry concern about the long-term cost is reflected in the statement by New York Shipping Association chairman Alexander Chopin in New York Shipping Association, “Progress Report 1959,” p. 8.
10. For background on the ILWU, see Bruce Nelson, Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s (Champaign, 1990); Selvin, A Terrible Anger; Larrowe, Harry Bridges; Howard Kimeldorf, Reds or Rackets? The Making of Radical and Conservative Unions on the Waterfront (Berkeley, 1988); Stephen Schwartz, Brotherhood of the Sea: A History of the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, 1885–1985 (Piscataway NJ, 1986); Henry Schmidt, “Secondary Leadership in the ILWU, 1933–1966,” interviews by Miriam F. Stein and Estolv Ethan Ward (Berkeley, 1983); and ILWU, The ILWU Story: Two Decades of Militant Unionism (San Francisco, 1955). The number of stoppages is from Charles P. Larrowe, Shape Up and Hiring Hall (Berkeley, 1955), p. 126. Andrew Herod, Labor Geographies: Workers and the Landscapes of Capitalism (New York, 2001), emphasizes the importance of spatial location in the maintenance of longshore unions’ power; although he specifically discusses the ILA, his discussion is equally applicable to the ILWU. A list of forty-eight “hip-pocket rules” in the port of Los Angeles, presented by the Pacific Maritime Association, appears in U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, Study of Harbor Conditions in Los Angeles and Long Beach Harbor, July 16, 1956, p. 14. The special importance of work rules to unions in an industry that relies on casual labor is emphasized by Hartman, Collective Bargainin
g, p. 41. For examples of the many rules in West Coast ports, see Hartman, Collective Bargaining, pp. 46–72, and Lincoln Fairley, Facing Mechanization: The West Coast Longshore Plan (Los Angeles, 1979), pp.16–17.
11. “Working Class Leader in the ILWU, 1935–1977,” interview with Estolv Ethan Ward, 1978 (Berkeley, 1980), p. 803.
12. J. Paul St. Sure, “Some Comments on Employer Organizations and Collective Bargaining in Northern California since 1934” (Berkeley, 1957), pp. 598–609.
13. Louis Goldblatt, “Working Class Leader in the ILWU, 1935–1977,” interviews by Estolv Ethan Ward (Berkeley, 1977), p. 784; Clark Kerr and Lloyd Fisher, “Conflict on the Waterfront,” Atlantic 183, no. 3, (1949): 17.
14. St. Sure, “Some Comments,” p. 643, claimed that Bridges carefully avoided calling a strike or letting the ILWU contract expire to avoid jurisdictional challenges. See also Larrowe, Harry Bridges, p. 352. Bridges’s testimony and much other information about the state of the Los Angeles port appears in the record of the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee hearings, Study of Harbor Conditions in Los Angeles and Long Beach Harbor, October 19–21, 1955 and July 16, 1956.
15. Larrowe, Harry Bridges, p. 352.
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger Page 36
