Labour and trade union cultures: the idiosyncratic experience of the European dockworkers in the 19th to the 21st centuries

The current relevance of a dockworkers’ trade union tradition

Achievement of the requisite balance of power at the level of the continent of Europe was in no manner self-evident. Unthinkable 20 years earlier, it was all the more remarkable in that it coincided, in contrast to the trend observable elsewhere of restricted and more inward-looking trade union formations, with the consolidation in the ports of international trade union pluralism. Whereas some of the transport workers’ unions belonged to the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF), a regional structure of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), others, mistrustful of an organization that was (according to Daniel Lefebvre 1999, general secretary of the CGT Ports and Docks Federation) ‘reformist in terms of both definition and vocation’, had, in June 2000, set up the International Dockworkers Council (IDC). Open to national federations as well as to individual trade unions, several of which continued to be affiliated to the ITF, the IDC – whose most influential founding fathers had been the French and Spanish trade unionists ² – soon boasted members in 54 countries and on five continents. ³ Determined to promote the dockworker identity, its members regard trade unionism as a struggle, considering that to neither of these vital aspects does the ITF accord sufficient weight or attention. ⁴ In the face of the draft Directive, these divergences did not prevent the requisite degree of convergence, even in the absence of any genuinely common stance.

By recognizing maritime operators’ freedom to employ whatever labour they chose for the handling of goods ⁵ , the aborted draft of 2006 was aimed at authorizing – making use of the notion of ‘self-handling’ – the performance of these tasks by sailors. In this, it reneged on one of the main gains achieved in the course of the dockworkers’ ‘professionalization’ (i.e. recognition of their specific occupational identity, skills and tasks), namely, the winning – to the detriment of the ships’ crews – of the right to unload merchandise. ⁶ On the eve of the 21st century, not only were the dockworkers defying the Commission but they were at the same time expressing their opposition to the strategy of the ever increasingly powerful shipping companies.

It was the shipowners who had initiated the ‘container revolution’ – now accounting for 30 percent of shipping traffic and 90 percent of all merchandise transported throughout the world – and it was they who stood to gain the most from implementation of the draft Directive. Insofar as they contributed to the financing of port infrastructures, their involvement went hand-in-hand with an increasing ‘privatization’ of the setting up and use of publicly owned facilities. Beyond Europe, the international institutions had been exerting steady pressure in this direction. The World Bank, for example, made the granting of loans conditional upon the handing over to the private sector of installations the exploitation of which had been previously subject to public prerogatives. The age-old links between the supply of dock labour, port administrations and shipping companies were tightened up still further as a result of constant mergers and acquisitions. In 2004, the three principal port operators – AP Moeller-Maersk (Danish), Hutchison (Chinese), P & O-Nedlloyd (Anglo-Dutch) – were all dependent on support from powerful shipping companies. In August 2005, AP Moeller-Maersk bought up P & O-Nedlloyd, while the following year saw an almost successful attempt by the establishment in charge of the port of Dubai (United Arab Emirates) to gain control of several North American ports. Currently, there is a trend towards the integration of transport chains, extending in the direction of industry, energy, telecommunications, wholesale and retail distribution, tourism, etc. The relationships developed in this context, contemporaneous with privatization of the railways, served to foster the emergence of powerful multi-modal groups that gained ownership of, or licenses for the operation of, numerous port terminal facilities. The shipping companies – the agents and beneficiaries of globalization, in their twofold capacity as transnational companies and leading operators in the trade and circulation of goods – have, by virtue of the mobility inherent in their area of specialization, acquired longstanding experience of how to bring ports and waged labour into the realm of competition. And this, precisely, is where their ambition was destined to collide with the dockworkers’ particular brand of trade unionism, justifying some enquiry into the history and underpinnings of this idiosyncratic tradition.

Nothing, it would seem, predisposed the ports, where random hiring-and-firing practices reigned supreme and any Tom, Dick or Harry could turn up in the hope of a few hours’ work, to set themselves up as established bastions of trade union strength and of a socialist labour ethos that posited itself in opposition to the capitalist business logic (Segrestin, 1975). Nothing, that is, except the extreme represented by a highly insecure form of livelihood which, if it were to be overcome, required the transformation of the composite aggregate of individuals gathered together for the duration of a shift into an authentic occupational community of labourers prepared for the struggle to oppose the employer prerogative to hire and to fire.

The dockworkers’ fierce opposition to the ‘wind of international reform’ (Hislaire, 1993) which, in the 1980s and 1990s, sought to ensure, by any available means, the demise of their movement ⁷ , was frequently misunderstood by public opinion and by broad sections of the trade union movement alike. During these times of simultaneously mounting unemployment and precarious labour practices, the fight waged against the ‘monthly payment of wages’ was frequently perceived as an absurd rearguard struggle. It is indeed a fact that the dockworkers lost the decisive battle in terms of communicating their cause. Ill accustomed to pleading this cause outside their own occupational circles, they had a habit of stressing details of labour operations on the dockside that were comprehensible only to the initiated. How were they to argue convincingly that employment by a company entailed a greater risk of losing their jobs than the systems based on the priority hiring of registered dockworkers? Or that the collective financing by the companies of allowances for unworked shifts obscured the particular nature of the link between intermittent work and insecure labour practices? (Pigenet, 2001, 2010) The dockworkers’ own strategy thus served to conceal the true scope of the fight being waged. Though it represented the legacy of a closed sectional occupational stance that had, over a long period of time, remained not incompatible with genuine manifestations of inter-occupational solidarity, it failed to link up with – or actually ran counter to – numerous contemporary social aspirations. One purpose of the reforms in the ports was also, it is true, to restore the authority of the employers: ‘The dockers, like all workers, need a boss who will pay them wages and on whom they will depend’, is how one French éminence grise summed up the situation (Dupuydauby, 1986). The dockworkers, however, proudly regarding themselves as the ‘last free manual labourers’ (Lefebvre, 1996), were quite adamant in their refusal to enter a common law community of wage-earners that they regarded as tantamount to the acceptance of direct subordination. Simultaneously, they resisted the explicit determination to put an end to the power of the trade unions, and this was a no less ambitious aim given the role that had been played by the trade unions in the construction of the dockworkers’ corporatist identity: ‘A true dockworker is a unionized dockworker’ (quoted in Coutant, 1996). And indeed, though the reforms did well and truly alter the organization of labour, what was to be confirmed in 2006 was that the trade unions’ defeat had not – except in the United Kingdom – led to their collapse.

Technical constraints and formal labour practices

Employment on the waterfront – with its dependence on the vagaries of the weather, the seasonal cycles of production and transportation of goods, the hazards of tramping and speculation – has always been subject to fluctuations in traffic, meaning that ports have needed to have a sufficient labour reserve that can be rapidly deployed in response to needs arising during the busiest periods. Insofar as the activity of ports was subject to the tough competition generated by the extreme fluidity of maritime operations, their reputation was inevitably dependent on such flexibility. The practice of intermittent labour, based on the hiring of dock labourers for shorter or longer shifts, was the means used to enable employer overheads to be kept to a minimum; as such, it is an integral part of the business rationale and practices familiar to all participants in the life and activity of the docklands.

These myriad dockland actors – merchants, shipowners, insurance companies, commissioners, consignees, freight operators, dock masters, and so forth – can certainly not be exhaustively enumerated, any more than it is possible to offer more than an extremely rough idea of the real tasks and functions of each party or of the precise location of the prime movers. Cargo handling, located at the interface of transport and trade, thus entails elements of both to varying degrees depending on custom, contract and balance of power. Like all their partners in the field, the companies operating in this sector – keen to establish a regular clientele – are past masters in the art of variable-rate piecemeal bargaining, last-minute reductions designed to clinch a deal, and sudden price hikes when some additional or urgent service is required and can be supplied, but only at a high premium. The sudden heyday of capitalism in the second half of the 19th century did nothing to erode the pre-eminence of a merchant culture, with its ability to drive hard bargains and exploit to the full the services of its numerous agents and intermediaries. Nor was this culture affected by the rigours of rationalization that were unleashed, as from 1880, by the second wave of industrialization. The concentration introduced by the railway, navigation and warehousing companies incorporated the adjustments required by the existence of a plethora of subcontractors who constituted a fertile bed of additional profits. This was very much the case in the area of cargo-handling activities where the leasing of the main equipment by the port authorities reduced the need to advance fixed capital to such an extent that many firms became specialized in the mere hiring out of labour, the cost of which frequently became a decisive element of competition. Labour relations were affected by such practices, as was the cohesion among employers. The web of differing interests complicated the expression of the various employer organizations, including in their response to workers’ demands. When the tension was at its height, the shipowners alone possessed the requisite degree of authority for the definition of common positions. It was they who, in 1890, set about founding the International Shipping Federation, the statutes of which introduced rules to ensure employer discipline in the event of labour unrest. In France, the Association des employeurs de main d’oeuvre dans les ports (port labour employers’ association) maintained close links with the influential Comité central des armateurs (central shipowners’ committee) in whose headquarters its offices were housed. In Hamburg, the Hamburg Amerika Line supervised the organization of local firms. However, the shipowners and merchants were unable, in spite of their role as firmly convinced promoters of the internationalization and liberalization of trade, to elude the political imperatives that prompted and governed the intervention of states, the other major actors in the life of the docklands.

Everything that goes on at sea and in the ports is, in the broadest and strongest sense of the term, strategy-related. Even when countries are not at war, the volume and the nature of traffic determines the nature and level of supplies to the populace, affecting the quality of public life and order, and forming an essential ingredient in the power of modern states. The history of differing forms of civic entity and their varying modes of transition to the world of nation states explains the coexistence of several forms of port regime in Europe, a variety that cannot be reduced to the binary typology constituted by governance by the municipality (Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and in some cases the UK) or by the state (France). In every individual case, special exemptions and licensing arrangements opened up the administration of ports and dockland areas to local and private interests in a manner that depended essentially on who was responsible for financing their infrastructures and operating equipment.

Free labour versus regulated labour or the three ages of cargo-handling services

The forms taken by cargo-handling services in the ports, on the basis of intermittent labour practices, were not predetermined by the differing frameworks and constraints that governed this form of labour. The variety displayed in this respect is an essential feature of the history of industrial relations in the docklands, insofar as it depends on the answers supplied to a fundamental question of social justice, namely, who should bear the costs of maintaining a reserve labour force? This whole issue may be summed up, essentially, by the observance of a to-ing and fro-ing between ‘regulated’ labour and ‘free’ labour.

Up to and during the second half of the 19th century the practice of the former variant was synonymous with the system of ‘corporations’. Though condemned to extinction by the new post-revolutionary economic order, the course of the corporations’ official prohibition extended, in western Europe, over almost a century. The local authorities, close to the trading companies, displayed tolerance towards the associations which, more or less everywhere, sought to perpetuate the corporations, insofar as they regarded them as the guarantors of public order and trading security. The monopoly enjoyed by these associations had gone hand in hand with the establishment of strict rules governing both membership and the distribution of labour among their members who were held collectively responsible for the quality of the services supplied. These advantages lost some of their appeal, however, in the face of the profitability criteria promoted by the large capitalist firms which gained the upper hand during the second half of the 19th century. The disappearance of the regulatory constraints, eroded from within by the special exemptions awarded one another by the masters in charge, played havoc with the labour market, the ‘emancipation’ of which exacerbated competition among labourers hired for shifts lasting for anything from between an hour and half a day. It is thus that dockside labour evolved in an opposite direction from the ‘transformation’ which, in the wake of the second industrial revolution, led to the emergence of modern waged labour, of a workforce, in other words, that became subject to employers and yet enjoyed better protection within firms keen to tie it down so that they might ensure the regular operation of their costly equipment (Castel, 1995).

The first steps taken by the trade unions, by way of reaction to the dockworkers’ worsening situation, bore witness, in the decade between 1870 and 1880, to the continuing hold of the corporatist model, insofar as the effort focused on a return, within the newly democratized context, to the forms of protection that the dockworkers had enjoyed under this model. This was not an achievement that could be accomplished overnight. The essential prerequisite for organization and action to this end was to overcome the highly diverse character and leanings of a dockside proletariat that everything transpired to fragment – and nothing more so than the twice-daily contest to be hired which required labourers to push and shove one another aside in order to gain the attention of the foremen who bore sole responsibility for composing the gangs of labourers that they would then hire out to the companies. The negotiations to this end supposedly took place on the dockside but the wheeling and dealing was, in actual fact, invariably conducted in the nearby drinking houses frequently run by the foremen themselves, their relatives or associates. Favouritism and clientelism were inevitably rife, together with the associated under-the-table payments and prevalence of recruitment channels based on clan, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. It was thus that the trade unions everywhere learned to associate the prospect of wage or other successes with the return of regulatory practices for the hiring and organization of labour, practices in which they too would be formally involved. These aspirations, unreasonable as they were, given the prevailing balance of power, proved powerful enough to counteract the divisions within the labour movement. In London, Liverpool, Antwerp, Marseilles, Le Havre, and Genoa, they were slowly transformed into genuine action, against all the odds, as a result of the impetus supplied by the impressive instances of industrial action in the course of which virtually the whole workforce came forward and entered the struggle. In the United Kingdom, the dockworkers’ unrest in 1889 coincided with the advent of the ‘new unionism’ based on extending trade unionism beyond the ranks of the elite trades and occupations. On the Continent, after the success in Antwerp in 1899, the Marseilles dockworkers introduced, in 1900, the ephemeral form of countervailing power represented by an ‘international trade union’, a label which itself served to make explicit the goal of overcoming one of the main factors of division. Here and there, for a brief period of time, the union membership card was the ‘open sesame’ to the docks. While the trade unions’ preference was for a closed shop, any registration system that gave some workers priority entitlement to be hired was better than ‘free’ labour. Along these lines, the experiences with official registration introduced in Genoa in 1906 and in Liverpool in 1912, met the labour movement’s demand for a closed market for dockside labour. The old communitarian ideal periodically resurfaced in the form of labour cooperatives determined to do away with the mediation of the ‘parasitical’ bosses. Yet, with the exception of the Genoan initiative implemented before 1914 with the support of the public authorities (Doria, 1999), successes were rare, in spite of numerous attempts launched on the occasion of lock-outs and strikes. The ITF, finally, had, since 1896, been seeking to coordinate actions and organize solidarity on the basis of an international programme of demands (Pigenet, 2006). The employers, initially surprised and briefly overwhelmed, and thus forced to accept a number of intolerable compromises, lost no time in organizing their response at the instigation of the shipowners belonging to the International Shipping Federation. Not all the employers, however, adopted an inflexibly defensive stance in the face of the workers’ unrest. Determined to retain the upper hand in the industrial relations equation and keen to select the most highly skilled dockworkers, the large warehouse and shipping companies also sought ways of circumventing the casual labour system in order to secure for themselves the loyalty of workers whom they could recruit on some kind of permanent basis. The experiment conducted in Hamburg in 1906 coincided with the creation of the employers’ association and the reorganization, under its auspices, of the local labour market (Weinhauer, 2001). The HBV, which was responsible for setting up the first hiring hall, divided the dockworkers into three categories in accordance with their links with the cargo-handling companies. This system subsequently inspired the labour pool – HAR – set up in Rotterdam in 1917 and in Antwerp in 1928.

The war effort had indeed served to prompt a few changes, albeit not without delay. The need for strict management of flows of merchandise and dockside labour had led to the intervention of military supervisors. The relations initiated with the employers subsequently spread to the trade unions which thereby gained official recognition, while working conditions and recruitment mechanisms were harmonized by the adoption of regulations. This twofold movement of state intervention and formal relations with the trade unions was rather abruptly interrupted by the return of peace. However, with the crisis of the 1930s, the demands for regulation of port services were renewed across the globe. In the United States the Pacific Coast longshoremen, after a major struggle, secured, in 1934, the creation of a joint registration and hiring system. Three years later, their counterparts in New Zealand won their demand for a guaranteed minimum weekly wage. News of these victories reached Europe where the trade unionists at Le Havre had, since 1928, been laying the foundations for controls on hiring and the negotiated composition of teams of dockworkers and their working conditions. While the Nazis had no intention of allowing independent trade unions to exercise any kind of responsibility whatsoever, they used the unrest in San Francisco as a pretext to remove the employers’ prerogatives and to give the GHBG, the new labour pool that succeeded the HBV, a monopoly on procedures for administering casual labour in the docklands (Weinhauer, 2001). In the wake of the strikes in 1936 and with reference to the model practised in Le Havre, the French dockworkers in turn generalized broad trade union supervisory rights over the hiring and organization of labour.

With the Second World War, control was taken once more by a government administration seeking to exercise its continuing concern for public order and the security of supplies. Just before war broke out, a French decree of 1939 made it compulsory for registered dockworkers to be in possession of official cards and in 1941 this provision was accompanied by the introduction of priority entitlement to work for these cardholders and the creation of central labour exchanges (Pigenet, 2010). In the United Kingdom, the sacred alliance between the Labour Party and the trade unions contributed, under the auspices of Ernest Bevin, former leader of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) and now Minister of Labour, to the introduction, in 1941, of a guaranteed minimum wage. This measure, initially valid for the duration of the war, was made permanent in 1946 with the passing of the Dockworkers’ Regulation of Employment Act (Whiteside, 1997). With some slight variations, a similar arrangement governing unemployment benefits for dockworkers saw the light, the same year, in Belgium where the employers nonetheless retained control over hiring. New legislation adopted in France in the following year introduced employer responsibility for financing unworked shifts by registered dockworkers and generalized the joint management of the registration permits, while the Italian trade unions regained, at the same time, a foothold in the labour organization bodies. The Netherlands and Germany avoided public regulation but the employers favoured permanent employment while mutualizing the management of the casual labourers to whom they granted the assurance of a minimum weekly wage (Nijhof, 1997). Irrespective of the methods used – whether legislation or collective agreement – the immediate post-Second World War period saw confirmation and completion of the protracted process of recognition of the dockworkers’ formal occupational status. This was accompanied by the semi-closure of the labour market for dockworkers, a guarantee of their status, alongside the trade union presence that was inseparable from the profound changes that had taken place and from the identity of the dockworkers that had finally gained recognition.

On the dockside: between standard trade union practice and traditional labour culture

The features common to the French and the British dock labour schemes, devised in the context of the simultaneously economic and social modernization of the post-war period, invite mistrust of law-based approaches that fail to pay heed to national traditions and trade union contexts. In France the dock labour scheme confirmed the legitimacy of the national trade union federation, which was given responsibility for its implementation, but while the CGT version of federalism preserved the autonomy so close to the hearts of its affiliated trade unions, the new rights enshrined in legislation were made applicable to labour struggles organized at the confederal level, entailing in some cases the risk of political instrumentalization and harsh repression of forms of industrial action out of keeping with the political climate during the Cold War years. On the other side of the Channel, meanwhile, the TGWU, having expressed its support for the goals of Labour governments, placed its hopes in the 1946 reform as a means of strengthening its apparatus, influence and authority, even if this meant disregarding the expectations of a rank-and-file reluctant to accept the nationalization of industrial relations and keen to preserve the more old-fashioned trade union values and traditions. Neither the regulatory texts, necessarily couched in highly general terms, nor the local agreements so extremely detailed in their descriptions of terms of employment, composition of shifts, variable rates of pay and bonuses depending on the nature of cargoes and modes of handling, could be said, however, to cover the full spectrum of dock labour situations and practices.

It is necessary, at this point, to focus, once more, on the primary level at which dockworker solidarity is experienced, that of the gang, group or team of dockworkers. All observers are agreed on the essential need for cohesion among the men allocated to the performance of tasks that are both dangerous and unpleasant, in the context of activities requiring a ‘heavy contribution’ (Segrestin, 1975). ‘The harder the job, the stronger the sense that we are all in it together’, was how one French dockworker summed it up in 1993 (Béroud, 1992). On labour sites the safety of each man depends on the vigilance of all. Smooth performance of the job is not served by individual prowess but is achieved by cooperation and the aforementioned ‘sense that we are all in it together’. In this respect, the performance of work in irregular shifts does not prevent the stability of teams whose members, accustomed to work together, have learned to coordinate their movements, to size up one another’s skills, to anticipate reactions, in short, to trust one another. The shift, or the ‘turn’, forms the everyday venue for work organization, exchange and sharing. As a collective of co-workers, comrades, companions-in-labour, gang-members, the team is also the appropriate framework for the devising of collective defence strategies, the display of values such as courage, stamina and sheer physical strength. What is thus forged and consolidated is a common fund of habitual forms of behaviour, the assimilation and incorporation of which contribute to the cohesion of the group.

The hallmark of this cohesion is a strong egalitarianism reflected in practice by familiar forms of address – in French the ‘tu’ form is de rigueur among fellow dockworkers – while various customary modes of interaction derive also from an underlying culture that lends life and colour to its initiates’ rituals and areas of reticence, displaying aspects of memory, legend, a territory and forms of recognition conveyed by nicknames, key words or taboos, as well as a particular set of gestures suitable for communication within a workplace where noise levels are invariably high. In what is an overridingly male code of behaviour, virility is considered a major attribute of identity, rooted in a scrupulous code of honour and expressed in everyday interaction in a thousand different ways by the exchange of exaggerated handshakes, slaps on the back, thumps, even the playful semblance of delivering blows (Pigenet, 2002). The dockworker culture also incorporates a form of tacit collusion and readiness to overlook fraud and ‘helping oneself’, provided such misdemeanours remain within the bounds of what is ‘reasonable’ (to quote a security officer – and docker’s son – employed on the port of Marseille; Pacini and Pons, 1996: 306–388). Within these same limits, the group reacts to any attempt at outside interference, whether from police, customs officials, or employers. The trade unions, while not always prepared to condone such behaviour, meanwhile find ingenious ways of incorporating into the rulebook mutual assistance practices such as priority hiring of, and allocation of light tasks to, elderly or handicapped comrades, visits to sick or incapacitated workers, with the organization of collections for their benefit, attendance at funerals, and so forth. In all these ways, the dockworkers’ teams act simultaneously as the curators of tradition and upholders of a form of labour politics that is ‘executive’, ‘direct’ and ‘action-based’ (Verret, 1988; Pigenet, 2011), and systematically hailed as an alternative to the institutional politics practised by the ruling classes. It is thus that the teams constitute the terrain par excellence for the implementation of ‘restrictive practices’, in existence, in some cases, from time immemorial, and which derive from a culture grounded in the need to evade and resist exploitation. Many of these practices – from the possibility of taking time off during working hours to the organization of task rotations – continued in existence until well on into the 20th century, even if no mention of their existence was to be found in any of the detailed clauses of the agreements. In actual fact, the trade unions, which turned a blind eye to such practices rather than actually encouraging them, were frequently tempted to negotiate their abolition in return for social gains of another kind over which they exercised some official form of control. Indeed, the trade union spread new rules, practices and standards of behaviour, such as the formal prohibition on crossing a strike picket or working in a team that included non-unionized labour. Yet it was also perfectly possible to punish – by means of a temporary exclusion from being hired – cases of persistent delay in the payment of union dues or acceptance of working with ‘ghosts’ (i.e. teams with fewer members than laid down by the local agreement). Frequently handed down from father to son in a milieu that boasted a high level of occupational heredity, these basic rules were learned and internalized by young men, from the moment they entered the trade, as an essential feature of their apprenticeship in how to take on their identity and be seen to behave in a manner befitting their status as members of the dockworkers’ community.

Over and above the teams of dockworkers, the actual dockside area or waterfront is the locus par excellence for appreciation of the strength – simultaneously constraining and formative – of the trade union and of the mode whereby its rituals are soaked up by members. The daily or twice-daily assembly of hundreds or thousands of men in the hiring halls was a vivid illustration of the sheer power of numbers. It was here that all communications were issued so that these halls were the venue from which orders went out and where the authority of the trade union was fully apparent and embodied in its officers’ attention to respect of the hiring procedures, fair distribution of tasks and composition of full teams.

It is not that we should imagine any perfect fit between trade union rules and dockworking practices. The lure of the best paid and least unpleasant or dangerous loading or unloading jobs repeatedly brought into play the latent hierarchies of origin and of age. Differing degrees of continuing reproduction of the old habits of the trade served to perpetuate other forms of segmentation which were reproduced, willy nilly, by the appointment of trade union leaders reputed for their obstinacy, their strong physique and their ability to boost the impact of their words, where necessary, with corresponding action. The longstanding group familiarity among members of a shift frequently delayed, in spite of the ostensible ideal of fraternity, the integration of newcomers. The lure of profit, decried by trade union activists, was a further incentive to oust the weaker members of teams or to take risks that ran counter to the safety rules won through years of struggle.

While the shop stewards generally share the working and living conditions of the workers, their specific tasks and responsibilities set them to some extent apart from rank-and-file members. The real break comes, here as in other occupational settings, when they take up a position as full-time officer, appointment to which signifies that a trade unionist has truly won his spurs and is acknowledged to possess such valuable skills that he may justifiably remain in office until he reaches retirement age. In not a few cases, indeed, the established power of the unions, together with the personal kudos attaching to leaders selected for their integrity, experience and force of character, has made general secretaries into ‘princelings’. ⁸ Power, at this level, is not shared; it is, at best, delegated, but subject to the requisite controls. While abuse of authority is a major risk, this situation can also generate a sense of relative isolation for activists whose quality is assessed on the basis of their ability to react appropriately, take the requisite initiatives and show determination in the pursuit of goals. The industry federation leaders are required, meanwhile, to possess a fine sense of diplomacy in holding together different local organizations within which a strong awareness of ‘place’ ⁹ and of ‘class’ combine, for better or worse. In truth, while the composition of the federal team of officers is the result of a careful sectional, geographical and political balancing act, the activists are hardly falling over one another to take up the national posts that cut them off from their fiefdoms. In France, most of those who, since 1946, have agreed to accept such posts came from secondary ports, and, even so, the transfer to the Paris headquarters of the federation was experienced as a painful wrench that was exacerbated, so far away from the frank sociability of working life in the docklands, by the formal nature of the relations developed at this centralized national level.

‘The dockworker’s demand is for absolute freedom, and in that way he demonstrates his class hatred (…); my own preference is to work only two days a week …’, declared, in 1935, a trade unionist from Rouen. ¹⁰ Four decades on, another trade unionist evoked ‘that well-known dockworkers’ freedom, that freedom you imagined you had to work for whom you chose, to turn down or accept a job, to take a lunch break just when you felt like it’ (Pacini and Pons, 1995: 134). With hindsight, he confessed, he had come to realise that ‘you cannot consider yourself a free man when you have to go down to the docks every morning to be hired, to perform a day of hard labour, only to be fired again in the evening. Even so, there are no two ways about it, somewhere in the back of your mind this idea of freedom retains its hold.’

After three decades of ‘reforms’ and in the wake of the technological changes entailed by containerization, the organization of work on the dockside now appears to be modelled on continuous-flow factory mass production. Workplace relations are now stamped by the increasing standardization that is taking its toll against a background of convergence in Europe and in the world at large (Pigenet, 2004). Whether it is a question of hiring practices or of the nature of their actual work, which has become less ‘physical’ and less collective, the dockworkers of the year 2010 now have very little in common with those of the 1960s. Very little, that is, apart from their culture, that pedestal of a collective identity of which the share attributable to trade unionism is not the least vital, after and among the many transformations that have taken place. Curiously, this trade union experience has received scant attention in spite of its obvious topical relevance.

That culture places its emphasis on the ability of groups – groups that are anything but homogeneous, and are placed in contexts of maximum individual competitiveness and great precariousness – to construct a collective entity on the scale of a site corresponding to a human dimension, one that can be directly and immediately apprehended and mastered. This feat has turned out to be more problematic at the national, or even international, levels which entail ‘imaginary’ solidarities (as described by Benedict Anderson, 1996). It remains that, if the core notion of wage guarantees was forged first and foremost – except in the highly particular sphere of public services – in the trade union bastions of large manufacturing companies keen to stabilize their labour force, the history of the docklands reminds us that it is, on occasion, on the peripheries of the modern wage-earning class that some of the most audacious trade union claims to wield a form of countervailing power were put to the test. The effort to observe and understand these successes would not be devoid of interest, however, during these times when both the welfare state and the wage-earning society are showing signs of severe strain. Not that the major social compromises of the 20th century brought to an end the inequality intrinsic in the employer/employee relationship – which they did, even so, help to ‘civilize’. Attention, what is more, to the detail of the specific employment practices serves easily to reveal numerous instances of circumvention, exemption and absence of comprehensive coverage in the arrangements that characterized the period.

The dockworkers’ world came to form one of these exceptions where trade unionism accomplished the tour de force of establishing a clear line of demarcation between flexibility and precarious working conditions. It is indubitably the case that the specific features of individual ports made it difficult to envisage any attempt to reproduce individual corporatist experiences elsewhere, and yet such models developed the world over, along partially similar lines, and their longevity raises questions of a scope that potentially exceeds the case of the docklands. On more than one occasion, the port- and dockworkers have displayed their capacity for historic action in situations where their livelihood was at stake. In France, their federation found a way of amalgamating a joint force, in the vicinity of the port in question, consisting of sizeable cohorts of workers whose identities might vary but who were related in terms of geography or similar form of labour status, for example small boatmen, waged fishermen and fish-processing workers, or wage-earners in the railway and airline freight-handling or cleaning services. And yet, as soon as we move beyond this first circle, the difficulty of communication invariably observed brings us back once again to the essential question of just how meaningful the inter-occupational level really can be as a trade framework for identification and effective intervention.

Translation from the French by Kathleen Llanwarne