By Herb Mills

Page 3

Granted this, the discussion ignores the second basic component of any wage earner's day-to-day occupational experience—the nature of his on-going, work-related contact with his employer and/or the supervising representative of his employer. The "labor-management" relations of the San Francisco longshore industry (both "on-the-job" and "across-the-table") have also been profoundly affected by the utilization of new technology.

A subsequent essay will focus upon the ways in which the nature and structure of modem longshore work, together with the social relationships which the new technology has spawned amongst the men, has directly and continuously affected their relationships to their employer. 3. The General Conditions of Work and Job Satisfaction Diversity. There were several sets of work-related circumstances which made it possible for the average San Francisco longshoreman of an earlier day to like his occupation.

To begin with, the men who worked from the hiring hall could work in one of nearly twenty different job categories on a day-to-day basis. As a rule, the volume and diversity of ship traffic also offered these men a variety of discharge or loading operations and cargoes.

A wide range of work locales was also routinely available because the piers were both numerous and dispersed. There was nothing routine, then, about the work which the hall man could perform on a day-to-day basis, or about his place of work.

Because of the wide variety of cargoes which each vessel typically loaded and discharged, there was also a very considerable fluctuation in the pace of the shipboard work and, for the most part, of the dock work.