| My dissertation is a study of power and collective action in post war American politics. Beginning in 1945 and for almost thirty years thereafter, the Port of New York, which extends for approximately 700 miles, was the site of intense class conflict. Striking longshoremen frequently battled the shipping companies, the police, federal and state political authorities, and their own union leadership simultaneously. First, what were the systemic limits imposed by business elites and political authorities against the rebellious dockworkers' rank-and-file movement? Second, how did workers respond to these constraints? That is, what was the longshoremen's political capacity, as such, to prevail given the systemic limits to class action in the American political process?; I argue that the containment of the dockworkers' reform movement was a reflection of systemic limits embedded within the American political process based on the social and economic stratification of workers within the broader political structure. This process combined ideological, judicial, economic, and political constraints that allowed the interests of business elites and political authorities to prevail. The fundamental conflict that characterized this process was the longshoremen's claims for a greater role in the decision-making process and control of the dock labor process. In the process of waterfront reform, political alliances and interests were constantly in flux, power was fragmented, and consensus among political actors never emerged.; At the end of the day, elite interests prevailed and the central demand of New York's dockworkers for greater control and participation in the waterfront labor process remained elusive and unresolved. Not without, however, changing the nature and conditions of work on the waterfront, an achievement that so far remains beyond the reach of other sectors of the American working class. |
