By Herb Mills

Page 14

It happened, then, that the community and union of these men was made a concrete social reality as their work proceeded.

The Community in Battle

By the late 1930s, the occupational circumstances which have here been described had existed for some time. As a result, the San Francisco longshoremen could by then walk the Embarcadero and work the docks and ships with a very considerable dignity.

The most concrete expression of that dignity-and the most encompassing embodiment of the many circumstances which underwrote its fashioning and maintenance- was a quite extraordinary on-the-job militancy.

There were three distinct, yet frequently interrelated components to this militancy:

(1) the enforcement of the contract,

(2) an insistence upon safety, and

(3) an insistence that the work proceed sensibly.

Broadly speaking, an effective militancy could in these respects be exercised by the men simply because their employer was fundamentally dependent upon their initiative and good will.

In other words, the decentralization which an efficient performance of the work required provided the men with a twofold opportunity: "producing" for their employer and effectively challenging his direction and control.

While for these reasons some measure of job control (and, of course, the sense of dignity which that entailed) devolved to every man, a substantial measure of such control might, therefore, be exercised by the good longshoreman.

Indeed, and because of the experience, skills, and innovative talents which he brought to the job, the good longshoreman could routinely exercise a very effective job control when in his judgment that seemed necessary.

Given this and the visibility of such control as he routinely chose to exercise, the good longshoreman could also earn the reputation of being "a really good union man." In any event, however, "the good union man" was almost invariably considered a very good longshoreman.

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