- 39 CHAPTER VI. DIRECT EMPLOYMENT INPACT A. Longshore Employment and Earnings There is no national series on employment of longshoremen but some of the major ports do collect local data incident to operation of the contracts with the I. L. A. The Task Force has assembled such local annual data for New York, Baltimore, and 10 ports on the Texas Gulf Coast. This information is shown in Table 4 for the contract years from October 1, 1959, through September 30, 1968. Data are presented as man-hours to avoid the double-counting which arises from the casual nature of employment in the industry. The ports included in this tabulation accounted for 47 percent of the value and 26 percent of the tonnage of total U. S. oceanborne foreign trade in 1968. The data do not reveal any significant trend in total longshore hours worked over the past decade despite the 45 percent increase in the volume of U. S. waterborne foreign trade from 267 million tons in 1959 to over 390 million tons in 1968. Table 5 contains available monthly data on longshore employment in Baltimore from 1964 forward. 1 These data clearly show the effects of the strikes in 1965 and 1968-1969: "anticipation" or build-up in September and December, a sharp drop during the strike, and great activity for two or three months after the strike. In terms of hours worked (or not worked) it appears as though the 1969 strike was much more effective than that of 1965. Assuming that the above-average hours worked in December 1964 and FebruaryMarch 1965 were all premium pay hours (time and a half), Baltimore longshoremen as a whole did not lose any income during the strike. They worked enough additional premium hours both in preparation for the strike and to clear up the port to make up the lost earnings of the strike. This does not appear to be the case in 1969, however there is some indication of an appreciable net loss of man-hours on the docks. - Longshoring has tended to be dominated by casual workers, reportedly by people who use longshoring to fill in between other jobs or as a source of additional income. The casual worker with only a peripheral attachment to the longshore work force presumably has greater willingness to take a strike for immediate cash benefits than a worker more closely allied to a single employer or industry or one who relies on an occupation as his prime source of income. Using Baltimore as an example and discussions with Port Authority officials and other informed parties at Atlantic and Gulf ports from Boston to Houston led the Task Force to conclude the situation in Baltimore typical of ports other than New York approximately 30-40 percent of individual longshoremen, in recent years, worked less than 100 hours a year on the docks; an additional - - 1/ These are the only consistent monthly data covering at least the last two strike periods which the Task Force was able to find. |