The first three words of this book read: “Dockworkers have power” (p. 1). They capture the essence of this fascinating and closely researched work by Peter Cole, Professor of History at the Western Illinois University. Cole considers how, in Durban and in San Francisco, dockworkers used this power, for example, to fight for racial equality, thus revealing how the history of labour unions is also about idealism and solidarity. In contrast to the view of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, of unions as introverted organizations of wage earners set up to bargain and protect their own interests and the interests of their members, this book concentrates on the outward aspect of labour organizations. The history of how dockworkers from one continent solidarized with workers in another continent uncovers this oft-forgotten aspect of unionism. This is a book on how workers’ struggles have often been conducted in the name of universal values, such as equality among mankind. Cole, the author of Wobblies on the Waterfront,Footnote 1 is an expert on dockworkers’ history in the United States. In his previous book, he identified the connection between unionism and idealism, unveiling the anti-racist and solidarity struggles of American workers. In Dockworker Power, the author takes the analysis to the next stage, and reveals the history of transnational activism between workers in the United States (San Francisco) and those in South Africa (Durban). Cole has engaged in extensive research on the transnational and transcontinental aspect of American labour unions. In 2013, an article by Cole appeared in the International Review of Social History (IRSH),Footnote 2 and Chapter six of this book is a re-elaboration of that article. This underpins the solidity of the author's research, which is based on an extensive use of primary sources, archival documents, as well as interviews conducted both in North America and in Africa.
A comparison between two apparently distant realities always brings with it a certain number of complications. An effort at re-conceptualization was necessary in order to be able, for example, to compare social movement unionism (South Africa) and the civil rights movement (United States), two apparently similar social phenomena, but indeed not identical. These difficulties are apparent in Chapter two, where Cole puts together the two realities. Cole's crusade consists of taking American labour history outside its national borders, across the oceans, in order to de-provincialize it. This methodological approach based on connections and comparisons, and essentially non-nationalistic in character, is perhaps what makes this book a distinctive and unique example of the global labour history of unionism. It is no coincidence that the book has been endorsed by Markus Rediker, a renowned global historian and co-author of the Many-Headed Hydra (2000),Footnote 3 a must-read for the global social history of the Atlantic.
As already hinted, a comparative methodology, especially on a global scale, invariably involves some risks concerning the comparability of the case studies. In South Africa, apartheid was an institutionalized form of racism implemented by a white minority in a desperate attempt to preserve their hegemony in a context of changing settler colonialism in the face of growing political awareness by the black majority. In the US, the black dockworkers were part of a minority whose history is of course closely connected to colonialism, but for whom the racial inequality and racism they faced was not as explicitly institutionalized as in South Africa. In responding to this, it is important to point out that the focus of the book is not so much on racism as on the intersections between change in industrial relations and workers’ power. Cole uses racism as a variable to measure the level of workers’ power in history.
Apart from looking at labour internationalism and international and transnational solidarity among left-wing workers’ movements, the book deals with another important theme, among many, in global labour and working-class history: technological change (the port of San Francisco was the first to fully containerize) and the increasing or decreasing power of labour unions in the transport sector, crucial for capitalist expansion and economic growth. The centrality of transport and shipping for the development of global capitalism is well known. The history of transport labour was the theme of a special issue of the IRSH in 2014.Footnote 4 Reducing transport time is essential to capitalist competition and, according to Cole, dockworkers are very conscious of how crucial their labour is. This is also the reason why dockworkers have been able to negotiate better conditions than workers in other sectors during the mechanization process, which did not produce the same upheaval as in other sectors, such as textiles or agriculture.
The effectiveness of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in the San Francisco Bay Area in terms of integrating black and white dockworkers and longshore men is particularly interesting. This is especially so because the events preceded the civil rights movement. Similarly, in Durban, the dockworkers’ unions represented a vanguard, if not the vanguard, of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa since the 1930s, well before the passing of the Freedom Charter of 1955. The Durban strikes in the late 1960s and early 1970s represent the culminating moments of dockworkers’ labour and anti-racist struggles, and Cole argues that they occurred precisely because of the realization on the part of the workers of how crucial their labour power was for the South African and perhaps global economy. It is automation that made workers unionize and unite. Unlike other industries, the endogenous change produced by containerization since the 1960s changed in a few years the way ports had worked for centuries, but dockworkers managed to retain their power and use it – by striking – to smooth the changes caused by automation. This power was also used for transnational action.
The history of the effects of technological change – containerization – is a more complicated matter. The dockworker has become more akin to a crane operator sitting alone in his cabin rather than a member of a crew or gang unloading the ships. There is a difference between San Francisco and Durban. In San Francisco, dockworkers were successful in negotiating. Cole himself states “paradoxically, what financially benefitted individual members hurt the union and the larger cause”. In South Africa, containerization broke the power of the Durban dockworkers. These differences did not prevent transnational solidarity as recently as in 2008, when Durban dockworkers boycotted a Chinese cargo of weapons for the Mugabe government/regime in Zimbabwe. However, is this history a triumphant one? In this respect, Cole does not offer clarification. For example, as explained by Sam Moyo, a Zimbabwean radical intellectual, Mugabe had been an advocate of anti-racism and anti-capitalism in Southern Africa. Therefore, the question remains, what were Durban dockworkers really fighting for?
Looking at the situation in the Global North, the influence of unions seems to have diminished even further as a result of ongoing automation alongside containerization. This book, although not directly assessing the issue of what workers in transport should do to strategize their actions, invites historians to switch their perspective and revert towards the future of workers’ unionism in neo-liberal times where capitalism is no longer challenged by any political, social, or cultural force, almost like a continuation of this story of dockworkers in San Francisco and Durban. In an ever increasingly integrated (globalized?) capitalist economy, can workers organize, unionize, bargain, and maintain their struggle at a sectoral or national level, or should they transpose their action to a transnational dimension? With this brilliant work on dockworkers’ power, Cole implicitly invites other labour, social, and economic scholars to pick up from where he leaves off and maybe develop a new analysis of labour strategy for transnational solidarity. Hopefully, scholars will meet this challenge with the same degree of verve and insight as that displayed by Peter Cole.
