THE UNION HIRING HALL AS A LABOUR MARKET: A SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
| Author | Stuart B. Philpott |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1965.tb00884.x |
| Date | 01 March 1965 |
| Published date | 01 March 1965 |
THE UNION HIRING HALL AS A LABOUR MARKET
A SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
STUART
B.
PHILPOTT*
INTRODUCTION
UNION hiring halls can be viewed as markets in which labour
is
bought
and sold. Such markets have received little attention from industrial
sociologists. Yet an understanding of the factors which influence the way
men sell their labour can often be provided more readily by sociological
analysis than by economic analysis. This paper attempts
a
sociological
description and analysis of such
a
labour market, namely one of the hiring
halls controlled by the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s
Union in the port
of
Vancouver, Canada.l
Waterfront workers in Vancouver are organized into five I.L.W.U.
locals, each with its own hiring hall.
This
paper deals only with Local
501
which represents the longshoremen who load and unload deep-sea
ships. Cargo handling on deep-sea ships varies greatly in demand for
labour and length of jobs. Hence
a
large proportion of longshoremen sell;
their labour on
a
day-to-day basis even though in Vancouver longshoring
has been largely decasuaIized by the union-controlled market system.2
But before examining this system an understanding of waterfront work
organization is necessary.
The Organization
of
Longshoring
The basic work unit in longshoring is the
gang.
It normally consists of
eleven men (although this size
is
a
point of contention
as
automation
increases) who work on the ship and by the ship’s side in the process of
loading or unloading. In action the gang
is
subdivided into three smaller
groups, co-operating but spatially separated by the technical demands
of
the work. These groups are
:
topside men, who work
on
the deck of the ship
;
hold men; and sling men, who work on the dock or on lighters to attach
slings to the loads of cargo. There are three topside men (one hatch tender
and two winch drivers)
;
six
hold men (two siderunners and four ordinary
stevedores)
;
and two sling men. The various positions in the gang bear
further scrutiny.
*
Research student, London School of Economics and Political Science
1 Research for this paper was conducted in 1963 and the wages and conditions cited apply
to that period.
I
would like to
thank
Professor Raymond Firth and Dr Burton Benedict
of
the
London School
of
Economics and Dr Martin Meissner of the University of British Columbia
for
helpful comments. Opinions expressed are my
own.
For descriptions of other systems of recruiting waterfront labour: C. P. Larrowe,
Shabe-Up
and
Hiring
Half
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1955) and Liverpool
University, Department
of
Social Science,
2%
Dock
Worker
(Liverpool University Press 1956)
17
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