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Embracing Waterfronts:
Dock Worker Solidarities in International Perspective
Shubhankita Ojha
In recent years there has been growing interest in the role of the Indian Ocean and its region in
world history. Even though the Indian Ocean was important during the earlier centuries as well
due to the flourishing trade in that region, it is only in the nineteenth century, according to Michael
Pearson, that “many of the deep structural elements underlying Indian Ocean history for
millennia— monsoons, currents, and land barriers are all overcome by steam ships and steam trains
in the service of British power and capital; the Indian Ocean world becomes embedded in a truly
global economy..”.1 The links and flows by this time contributed to the creation of an interesting
“shared public sphere of the port cities that ringed the Indian Ocean in this period”2 and needs to
be explored. It is in this network, that Bombay, as one of the most important ports along the
Ocean’s rim, is unique. What is interesting about Bombay is the nodal position it came to occupy
by the nineteenth century not only in the expanding Asian sea-borne trade, rather also in terms of
technology like shipping and communications which connected Europe and the Indian Ocean with
the rest of Asia. Big steam liners loaded with passengers, cargoes and mail sailed between Atlantic
Europe, the US and the Indian Ocean and charted a fascinating history of global movements.
1
Pearson, Michael. The Indian Ocean, London: Routledge, 2003, p. 12
Bose, Sugata. A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 2006, p.278
2
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While maritime history identifies lascars as ‘world’s first global migrants’ for their work on ship
and experiences abroad, workers who prepared these ships for its voyage and remained at the docks
still need a more careful study. Ports need to be acknowledged more than just transient spaces in
the larger narrative of the journey of a ship. Dock workers have been attributed certain stereotypes.
They are usually seen as strong casual workers roughened by long hours of strenuous physical
work and hence given to drinking, violence and crime. Dockers have traditionally been seen as
militant and strike prone and hence most of what has been written about them pertains to dock
strikes and trade unions. A lot of it has also been shaped by their portrayals in cinema like Marlon
Brando’s On the Waterfront which shows dock workers given to crime and the dominance of
gangsters at the New York docks or even the Bollywood movie Deewar which is a depiction of
the life of a man from being an ordinary dock coolie to being a smuggler.
The recent shift to global histories and transnational studies makes it crucial to enquire into a range
of intellectual issues like the possibility of looking at dock work as an international occupation.
The ship was not only the means of communication between continents, but also the first place
where working people from different continents communicated. The Ports similarly were not just
places where such ships were loaded, unloaded or repaired. There is a need to study them as work
sites but also ones that witnessed interactions and experiences of several kinds. As Frederick
Cooper says, “ Unloading a ship, whatever the language in which the labourers talk about what
they are doing, is still unloading a ship”3.My paper tries to look at how Bombay dock workers are
placed at the intersections of crucial crossroads. This paper combines part of my doctoral work on
Bombay dock workers and my future research plans of locating Bombay in a wider network of
3
Cooper, Frederick. “Dockworkers and Labour history”, Sam Davies et al (eds.) Dock Workers: International
Explorations in Comparative Labour History, 1790-1970, Vol 2, Aldershot: Ashgate 2000, p. 523.
2
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oceanic trade and movements and on looking at dock workers as part of a global working class
and dock work as an international occupation. In the first part of the paper I look at two very
significant changes in the twentieth century – decasualization and containerization that have had a
huge impact on the nature of dock work worldwide. The paper in assessing these two changes also
tries to unravel moments of dock worker association at work, neighbourhoods and in a more global
imagination. The importance of port workers emanates from the crucial and nodal role they hold
in global capitalist relations but also the fact that the concentration of workers with varieties of
experiences in a small space also makes it particularly vulnerable to disruption. It is in this context
that I attempt to study how the changing labour regimes in the twentieth century have affected
these workers. The second part of the paper is still in a nascent stage and tries to locate dock
workers as part of an international community which even though divided by seas and oceans,
presents a unique form of solidarity. Dockers present an interesting case of various networks and
linkages. They are connected both to the urban workers and the lascars geographically and also to
villages due to migratory linkages which make them a very interesting case study.
Situating Bombay in the Indian Ocean Network
By the nineteenth century Bombay stood at the crossroads to significant exchanges and interactions
in the Indian Ocean region which also established its linkages with the global capitalist economy
at large. Apart from the British colonial enterprise and decline of Surat as the most important port
of Western India, it was also the sustained economic relationship between China and India that
gave rise to Bombay. The one event that was significant in the beginnings of this industrial phase
was the American Civil War due to which supplies of textile from American mills dried up and
the British had to look towards India. The outbreak of the American Civil War, the opening of the
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Suez Canal and the resulting exponential growth in trade brought Bombay to the threshold of
modernity and urbanism. Apart from the cotton boom, what also needs to be emphasized in the
growth of Bombay is the role of indigenous shipping in India. Indigenous shipping and the cottonopium trade were closely interlinked at Bombay and this activity made the port here increasingly
busy as also connected with wider networks. There were also other leading Parsi capitalists
involved in the Bombay ship building industry eventually. Some of these were the Jamsetji
Jejeebhoy, Dadyseths, Readymoneys, Banajis, Patels, Narielwallahs and Camas. They came to be
important shipowners of the time and were involved in the profitable China trade. Apart from the
Parsis, there were also other communities like the Lohanas, Bhatias, Bohras, Khojas and Memons
who frequently crisscrossed the Indian Ocean also came from the Kachchha region and as Chhaya
Goswami’s work shows that these communities were both reputed for being engaged as mariners
or in the shipbuilding industry and most importantly as traders in the Muscat and Zanzibar regions4.
These mercantile communities either settled in Kachchha, Gujarat and Bombay or even in Muscat
and Zanzibar and took part in the Indian Ocean trade. These Kachchhi traders had developed a
web of service providers and connected the markets of Muscat and Zanzibar to the ports of Bombay
and Mandvi. Also important were the Konkani Muslims, a mixed race of Sunni Muslims tracing
ancestry to the Arabs who settled along the coast of Western India from Goa to Cambay. They
came to Bombay from Ratnagiri, Bankot, Alibag, Panwel, Thana, Kalyan, Bassein, Ghodbundar
and other places on the western coast where they had, for years, followed the professions of trading
and sea faring5. Along with this trade grew a new section of Indian financiers, rising entrepreneurs
and their increasing dominance over the Asian seas. Most of the men employed at the dockyards were
4
Goswami, Chhaya. The Call of the Sea: Kachchhi Traders in Muscat and Zanzibar, c.1800-1880, New Delhi: Orient
Blackswan, 2011
5
The Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island, Vol.I, p. 255
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also said to be direct descendants of workers who migrated from Surat originally6, perhaps due to the prior
experience in ship-building etc. Hence, it was common to find a large number of Konkani Muslims from
Ratnagiri, Janjira and Malwan, Goans and Parsis among the skilled labour here like riveters, platers,
hammermen etc. There are strong reasons to believe that most of the communities involved in
shipmaking and dock building like the Konkani Muslims or also the Parsis figured amongst dock
workers and lascars due to their familiarity with the coastline.
Dock Work and The Case of the ‘Casual’
The employment of dock workers all over the world, well into the twentieth century, had problems
peculiar to itself. This was due to the fact that port traffic was subject to wide fluctuations which
were not necessarily seasonal or otherwise cyclic, rather occurred daily depending upon the number
of ships entering or leaving the port on any day, the quantity of cargo to be loaded or unloaded, the
nature of the cargo and the manner in which it was received or dispatched, the type of mechanical
equipment and facilities available both on board ship and on shore and the rate at which the cargo
could be cleared from the shore or made available to feed the ship. Here local conditions varied
considerably from port to port, between cargo and cargo, between ship and ship, and even between
the holds of the same ship or different parts of the same shed, so that a standard could hardly be laid
down. The demands for dock labour varied correspondingly and the employment of workers tended
largely to be casual.
6
Burnett-Hurst, A.R. Labour and Housing in Bombay: A Study in the Economic Conditions of the Wage Earning
classes in Bombay, London: P.S.King & Sons Ltd, 1925, p.93
5
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In Bombay, the requirements of labour for port and dock work were complex and it was a rather
heterogeneous labour force consisting of different groups and categories of workers skilled, semiskilled and unskilled employed by various agencies. So far as the loading and unloading of ships
and the handling of cargo at the docks were concerned, the labour employed for such work could
be broadly classified into stevedore workers who handled cargo in the ship’s holds and were
employed by various stevedoring firms, shore workers who handled cargo at the docks, in transit
sheds, warehouses etc. and the cranemen employed by the port authorities. Since the demand for
labour was subject to sudden and arbitrary variations, it was a common practice among employers
to delegate responsibility for the hiring of workers to intermediaries variously known as jobber,
mukaddam, maistry or serang. Usually the port authorities maintained a permanent establishment
under their direct control, but the bulk of the labour engaged in loading and unloading was casual
and employed indirectly through stevedores or other contractors. Moreover, there was no
uniform system of employment at the different ports in India itself. While at Bombay, the casual
dock labourers were employed through toliwalas who were paid by the Port Trust, in Calcutta,
most of the dock labour was supplied by one firm of contractors M/s Bird and Co. and not directly
employed by the Port Commissioners.
In Bombay, prior to 1910 all labour required in the docks was obtained by contract7. The provision
of labour for the requirements of the docks had since the year 1884 been entrusted by contract to
the Firm of Haji Cassum, Karamsi Damji and Dadabhoy8. This contractor maintained a semipermanent staff of about 25 supervisors to supervise work and 20 mukaddams who supplied the
gangs of labourers as required. These firms did not employ the labourers but entered into
7
8
Secretary Department, Bombay Port Trust, Trustees Resolution no. 169, Meeting of 5th May 1936, p. 130
Secretary’s Department, Calcutta Port Trust, File no. 171/III, 1913
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subcontracts with some intermediaries who were then responsible for bringing in the necessary
number. The intermediaries were known as ‘Toliwalas’. In 1910 the old established contractor
gave up the contract after the Port Trust declined their demand for higher rates and from 1911, the
Port Trust took upon itself to supply its own labour but did not abolish the method of giving subcontracts to the toliwalas and now employed labour directly through them. This gave rise to the
toliwala system where apart from a permanent establishment of workers under the Port Trust,
labour was recruited and supplied by registered gangmen known as toliwalas. Most of these dock
workers increasingly came from the Ratnagiri district of Konkan and the districts of Poona,
Ahmednagar, Sholapur and Satara in Deccan. The shipping companies or stevedores too
employed its labour through foremen, known variously as serangs, mukaddams, gang maistries,
jamadars, toliwalas, or sardars. The stevedore labour working on board the ship was mostly
recruited from the North West Frontier and Pathans and Hindustanis worked on the ships for
stevedoring firms9. Nevertheless, by the twentieth century, a large part of stevedore labour came
to be recruited from the United Provinces. In most of the cases, the serangs usually recruited
labourers from his own village or from neighbouring villages and therefore knew each of his
workers personally. This usually provided the bulk of his gang apart from the daily group of men
who presented themselves at the dock gates.
It is interesting to see that Bombay as the most important port on the western coast of India, stood
at the centre of the wider oceanic work culture where the entry for migrants into the dockyard
labour market was mediated through the influential job contractors known as serangs or toliwalas.
Even though the casual labour problem was faced by a number of ports worldwide including major
9
D/o Industries and Labour, Labour Branch, F.no. L-3001(34), 1935 7
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European ones, India and the Kenyan port of Mombasa show how the informal networks forged
at the workplace invaded into the social space. The various stevedoring, shipping and warehousing
firms in the city of Mombasa hired workers through intermediaries and headmen known as
‘serangs’.10These serangs organised gangs of workers, often twenty to twenty-five in number, in
turn relying on their intermediaries called ‘tindals’. The serangs collected the workers, supervised
them on the job, and received and distributed a sum of wages representing the earnings of the gang
as a whole. Bombay too saw the recruitment of workers mediated and determined through
influential job contractors called ‘toliwalas’ also known variously as ‘serangs’, ‘mukaddams’ etc.
It is interesting how apart from striking similarities in the recruitment process of the labour market,
the serang remained a dominant feature at both these ports. There was no uniformity in the
recruitment process as such that ranging from race and ethnicity being important to ports like
Mombasa to religion, caste and kinship in Bombay docks which kept the dockers together and
London docks where race and ethnicity have not really played a major role. However, underlying
this is the phenomenon of casual labour that was common at all of these ports and in the process
an irregular pattern of recruitment where some men were more preferred than the others at the
dock gates by the contractor/intermediary.
A lot that has been written by historians about these recruiting agents and the seasonal patterns of
these workers has been influenced by colonial perception and discourses about them. While casual
labour especially in the docks was seen as an anomaly in late nineteenth century London and
10
Cooper, Frederick. On the African Waterfront: Urban Disorder and the Transformation of Work in Colonial
Mombasa, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987, p. 30,37
8
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something that needed urgent regulation11, there seemed to be nothing wrong with the employment
of casual labour in the colonies. In Mombasa, casual labour appeared to European officials as too
typical of Africa and hence here too, port companies were content in recruiting dockworkers
through intermediaries known as serangs12. Similarly at the Indian ports, the workers were said to
be engaging in the ‘annual trek’ to their villages to visit families, attend marriages or to attend to
their fields at certain times of a year13. This period was said to be clearly corresponding with the
crop sowing and harvesting periods of the kharif and rabi crops respectively and it was believed
that labour migrated back to the villages for several reasons, the most important being the tending
of their fields. This was considered as one of the main reasons why port work went through periods
of surplus labour and then a deficit which lent a seasonal character to the industry as a whole. The
colonial discourse saw the institution of the intermediary as archaic, traditional and indigenous and
rooted in Indian traditional or pre-capitalist culture and responding to the “needs of labour for
familiar relationships in an unfamiliar environment”14. This view relegated workers as being averse
to the rhythms and disciplines of factory life which made them aspire for casual and temporary
engagements in the city to be able to return back to their villages at the very first instance. This kind
of work then required agents who were familiar with and could recruit such men who usually moved
in and out of jobs.
What is interesting to note, however, is that underlying the seasonality discourse is first of all the
assumption that the Indian factory worker was essentially an agriculturist. Secondly, we need to
11
Jones, Gareth Stedman. Outcast London: A Study in the relationship between classes in Victorian society,
Oxford:Claredon Press, 1971.
12
Cooper, Frederick. On the African Waterfront
13
Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India, June 1931, p. 13-14
14
Roy, Tirthankar. “Sardars, Jobbers and Kanganies: The Labour Contractor and Indian Economic History”,
Modern Asian Studies, 42,5 ,2008, p. 973
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draw our attention to the phenomenon of ‘seasonality of production’ itself which rendered a
number of workers unemployed when there were no ships at the docks. The Chairman of the
Bombay Port Trust himself agreed to the fact that a number of workers were let off easily during
the monsoon months because this was a slack period at the docks15 . It was, hence, the ‘seasonaility
of work’ itself rather than ‘seasonality of labour’ which rendered labour casual and forced him to
migrate back to villages or other industries when there was no work.
At the very outset it is important to mention that the institution of the intermediary was not only
specific to Indian industries. Infact these agents were also found in British industries and in the
recruitment and organisation of labour in Africa, China and Japan16. In London docks, although
there was no formal institution of the intermediary and the dock companies provided the required
labour, the actual recruitment of the casual labour at the call-stands was entrusted to ‘foremen’. In
a description of how these men were selected at the gates, the old process of “calling-on” dock
workers at the usual open air stands, and the consequent scramble for work have often been
described. Most of the description resembles what Vernon Jensen has to say about the labour
recruitment process at London docks:
“The foreman stood on the raised ledge of a warehouse and eyed the crowd all over as if it were a herd of cattle. Then
very deliberately he beckoned a man with his finger, and after a considerable interval, a second and a third until he
had taken ten in all. There was an evident enjoyment of a sense of power, understandable enough as human nature
goes, and the whole proceedings were horribly suggestive of the methods of a slave market... It is during the latter
stages of a heavy call that disturbances are most frequent. The men begin to fidget and push; those who are small and
weak are shoved aside by the more burly, and sometimes a struggling mass of men may be seen elbowing and fighting
to get to the front, and to attract the foreman’s attention... the foreman distributes the metal tallies which are the token
15
Royal Commission on Labour, Oral Evidence, Bombay Presidency, Vol.I, part II, p. 392 16
Chandavarkar, Rajnarayan. The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India: Business Strategies and the Working
Classes in Bombay, 1900-1940, Cambridge: CUP, 1994, p. 100
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of engagement. The spectacle of some scores of men struggling violently is by no means infrequent here.”
17
While employment was restricted due to the power of intermediaries in certain ports like Bombay,
it was also mediated through ‘unions’ in other ports. These ‘unions’ were nowhere close to unions
that represented labour demands, instead were the creation of shipowners themselves. At the San
Francisco Port, inorder to get steady work, longshoremen had to join a company union which the
shipowners had organized since 1916 after breaking the American Federation of Labour18. This
was the ‘Blue Book’ and it was designed to prevent a bona fide union and the shipowners had
signed a closed shop contract with it. Whoever was not part of the Blue Book went through the
same process of standing around infront of the docks and waiting for whatever work was available.
At the heart of such an arrangement was the logic of the control employers exercised over labour
time. A situation where there were always a large group of men standing outside the docks, ready
and willing to take up the place of those who were not working fast enough, suited the employer’s
need for cheap labour and steady work. Since labour was indirectly employed, it also meant that
the employer did not feel the need to provide any sort of housing, welfare benefits etc. to labour.
In the case of Bombay as already mentioned above, apart from recruiting at the gates, it was
common for these labour recruiters to go down into their own villages and bring along men into
the new city who sought work at the cotton mills, docks and other emerging industries. Hence, this
17
Jensen, Vernon H. Hiring of Dock Workers & Employment practices on the Ports of New York, Liverpool,
London, Rotterdam and Marseilles, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1964. p. 185-186.
18
Larrowe, Charles P. Harry Bridges: The Rise and Fall of Radical Labour in the U.S., New York, Westport:
Lawrence Hill & Co., p. 8-9
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labour agent as in many standard Indian examples “represented a convergence of three distinct
intermediary roles –supervisor in the production site (the foreman), recruiter or labour contractor,
and headman of communities”19 and hence was indispensible. Apart from his role at the worksite,
also significant as pointed out by Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, was the intermediaries’ involvement
in the social organization of urban neighbourhoods20. The jobbers or toliwalas most of the times
recruited men from his village and brought them to the city. Once in the city, these intermediaries
then looked into the general well-being of these workers. Payment of wages was made through the
toliwalas who acted as small agents with the advantage of having a personal interest in and some
measure of confidence among the men. In many cases, the labourers were not paid in cash at the
end of each day, rather the toliwala kept it with himself in the account of the individual labourer,
who was allowed to withdraw an amount sufficient only for his maintenance. Thus they functioned
also as bankers to their gangs. According to Cholia, the foreman‘s objective in extending credit
was to resist the tendency amongst labourers to migrate from one gang mukaddam to another when
there was a rise in the daily rates of wages due to a sudden rush of work21. A number of times, a
gang of workers resided with the toliwala in lieu of rent and so these intermediaries also acted as
landlords to workers who had no place to stay in the new city.
On the other hand, this did not always mean a very peaceful relationship between the workers and
the intermediary. There were chances also of the illiterate dockworkers getting cheated by the
toliwalas who demanded bribes from these workers to procure work. Also workers frequently
complained of a part of their salary being withheld by the toliwala inorder to ensure that the
19
Roy, Tirthankar. “Sardars, Jobbers and Kanganies: The Labour Contractor and Indian Economic History”, MAS
42,5 ,2008, p.971-998. 20
Chandavarkar, Rajnarayan. The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India: Business Strategies and the working
classes in Bombay, 1900-1940, Cambridge: CUP, 1994
21
Cholia, R.P. Dock Labourers in Bombay, Bombay: Longman, 1941, p.59 12
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workers turned up for work regularly. In fact, many resorted to police or law courts to recover
unpaid wages22 and even went on occasional strikes as a result of what they alleged to be a
reduction in wages and victimization on the part of the contractors who engaged them23. Hence, it
would be wrong to assume that the workers were simply passive victims of serang dominance. It
is important to highlight this dialectical relationship between the intermediary and the workers
which reflected interdependence and patronage but also at the same time prevented possibilities
of absolute control.
Employers considered it of little gain to maintain a regular and permanent labour force and they
adopted the policy of recruiting and dismissing the workers at will. Infact the practice of getting
labour recruited through intermediary suited them best as the labour recruiters were familiar with
where labour could be found and what rates. It becomes extremely crucial and interesting,
however, to examine why and when such an arrangement proved to be less lucrative to port
authorities. I argue, until the time the toliwalas and serangs were capable of organizing labour
through personal networks and neighbourhoods, the arrangement remained profitable to the
employers. However, it was the failure of the intermediary to do so in the face of emerging labour
radicalization of the twentieth century that led to its eventual demise.
‘Regulating’ the Casual
It was during the early decades of the twentienth century that the port employers looked at the
institution of the ‘intermediary’ with great suspicion and there were efforts towards regularizing
22
23
Times of India, Aug 2, 1905 Times of India, Mar 14, 1932, pg 7;
Times of India, Nov 19, 1937, pg 12.
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dock work. Similar pieces of legislation emerged for various other industries at eliminating casual
labour and they have been mostly seen as responding to labour demands during this time. It is
perhaps the linkages, proximities, neighbourhoods that workers lived in, which explains why
decasualization at ports coincided with as Ralph James’ work on cotton mills or Arjan de Haan’s
work on jute mills24 would suggest, several other industries in India. So we clearly know that
decasualization was not peculiar to the docks.
Post the Great Strike of 1889 in London by dock workers, authorities were forced to acknowledge
the casual labour problem at Britain ports and the ‘precariousness’ associated with the industry.
The occupation of the dock worker was classed as a dangerous trade, and it came to be governed
by special regulations which were known as dock regulations. A system was introduced whereby
permanent labour was allocated work and then further labour needs were met by preference men
in the A, B and C category. Nevertheless, a legislation to regulate casual labour globally was
encouraged only during the World War I when ports faced immense labour shortages. The
recognition of the evils of this situation and of the inability of individual action to overcome it led
to concerted efforts by employers and port workers’ organizations in some ports to establish
registration schemes as a precursor to their eventual decasualization. In Great Britain the Liverpool
Docks Scheme of 1912 was the first large scale experiment in the direction of decasualization and
soon a number of ports followed suit25. However, the decasualization of labour as a legislation was
given effect to only after the Second World War at most of the ports. In India, decasualization
24
James, Ralph C. “The Casual Labour problem in Indian Manufacturing”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics,
Vol. 74, No.1, Feb1960
Haan, Arjan De. “The Badli system in industrial labour recruitment”, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol.33,
1999, p.271.
25
Port Labour Inquiry Report, London, 1931, p.13-16
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came about with the passing of the Dock Workers (Regulation of Employment) Act 1948.
Accordingly and under the provisions of the Act, the Government of Madras, Bombay, and
Calcutta drew up their respective Dock Workers (Regulation of Employment) Schemes on the
lines of U.K. Dock Workers (Regulation of Employment) Scheme 1947. Under each scheme a
tripartite body in the form of Dock Labour Board (DLB) was constituted. The DLBs were now to
employ stevedore labour . They were to register workers under the two categories of ‘ monthly’
and ‘pool’ workers. Similar Schemes like the Casual Labour Scheme of 1954 in Mombasa or the
enactment of the New Jersey- New York Waterfront Commission Compact in 1953 brought about
regulation at other ports too. The National Dock Labour Board in Britain established under the
National Dock Labour Scheme in 1947 acted as a precursor and a number of such tripartite boards
like Mombasa’s Port Labour Utilization Board and the several Dock Labour Boards in India with
participation from the state, employers and labour were created in other countries as well. In San
Francisco, the strike of 1934 had been helpful in changing the hiring process significantly and here
too, introduction of the ‘A’ group of registered workers along with a reserve ‘B’ list of workers
was achieved.
There is a discourse which sees the role of technology as crucial in determining the need of a
permanent labour force. According to Gareth Stedman Jones, changes in technology that the turn
of the century offered required work discipline of a different kind. The encroachment of steam,
according to Jones, disrupted the habitual pattern of seasonal employment. The more leisurely
pace of labour before the coming of steam was replaced with “increased casuality” and “intensified
work”.26 The big steam ships pushed the shipping companies to cut short the time needed for
26
Jones, Gareth Stedman. Outcast London: A study in the relationship between classes in Victorian society, Oxford:
Claredon Press, 1971, p 121.
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loading and unloading these expensive ships. With steam ships sailing in and out of the port round
the year and the ports world over facing stiff competition there was no room for delays. This
urgently called for structural changes in the number and composition of the dock workers. One of
the concerns worldwide regarding the port industry became of coordinating the irregular demands
of port employment and of regulating the supply of labour which was seen as hindering the process
of providing adequate welfare to the workers. It came to be realised that the complex problems of
casual labour required more than just a restructuring of some of the organizational features of dock
work and instead involved the fundamental alteration of the life of the worker. Degenerate
conditions resulting from chronic underemployment and the widespread corruption by
intermediaries or hiring agents in the form of bribery etc. needed urgent correction. I argue,
however, that it was not the ‘disorder’ of the casual labour that bothered the port authorities as
much as their getting ‘ordered’ or ‘organized’ in anyway which would possibly bring about the
disruption of work that called for reforms in the labour regime.
While the nineteenth century and the introduction of steam ships did lead to a change in the nature
of work with huge shipping lines ringing the oceans, the fact that it led to a ‘concern with the
casual’ cannot be over emphasized. The change to steam ships did introduce immense changes in
the port infrastructure but it was not as sudden as it has been made to appear so. The steam ships
come in by the early nineteenth century and gain prominence by the 1830s due to big steam liner
companies like the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, British India Steam
Navigation etc. Nevertheless, even during this time and till as late as the end of the nineteenth
century, sailing ships continued to be made in Bombay dockyards and were engaged in coastal
shipping along the coasts of the Indian Ocean. What this change in technology did, however, was
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to make dock work increasingly casual due to the volume of trade passing through the ports and
with increasing number of migrations into the city. With the transition to larger, steel hulled ships,
work of loading and unloading became less skilled and more casual in nature. As Roy Mankelow
mentions in the case of the London docks, by 1865 the dock companies’ perms had largely been
replaced by casual men and contractors, and piece work rates were being introduced in some docks
to encourage the casual labour force to greater effort27. Hence, while technology had a major role
to play in making the volume of trade happening at any port larger which also demanded better
infrastructure, its role in determining the decasualization needs to be questioned and the reasons
need to be found beyond it.
Imposition of order on increasingly global systems of labour through regulation had become a
grave matter of concern by the twentieth century. The 1930s present a new chapter in the industrial
relations at docks world over where imperatives of World War II and increasing agitations by
labour obliged the government to look at demands of labour seriously. Wave of communist
movement was influencing large parts of working class across the globe which was also advocating
the organization of labour into formal trade union associations. The scope of law and worker’s
resistance both broadened significantly which affected newer legislations directed towards the
cause of labour.Ports provided possibilities of volatile clashes due to their position between land
and the sea and the constant flocking of migrants into it both from the city and the sea. Emergence
of labour leaders like Jack Dash in London docks, Harry Bridges at the San Francisco port, Placid
D’Mello in Bombay and many similar leaders was a response to this movement in various parts of
the world. Labour was certainly getting restive. World War II was an impetus for state intervention
27
Mankelow, Roy. “The Port of London, 1790-1970”, in Sam Davies et al (eds). Dock Workers: International
Explorations in Comparative Labour History, 1790-1970, Vol. I, Aldershot: Ashgate, p. 370
17
[Pleasedonotcite]
in planned production and labour control in many parts of the world. This was supported by the
colonial struggles which raised the stakes of the capitalist states to contain potential for disorder.
In Bombay, clashes between the laboring population in the city and the authorities by the late
nineteenth century had already caused serious concern. The strike at the end of the nineteenth
century in 1898 by dockers and cartmen28 in solidarity against the authorities for their plague
measures made the leading European employers advocate the need for an amendment in the system
of employment of labour at docks. It was the inability of the intermediary to ‘produce’ and
‘discipline’ the kind of labour that changes in the twentieth century demanded that led to the
eventual decline of the influence of toliwalas and labour contractors at Bombay docks.
More than looking at decasualization as a welfare measure, we need to situate it as a strategic one
in the face of changing global circumstances at the port which necessitated quicker turnover of
cargo and labour regulation. We also need to assess the fact that it was not so much a need to
legislate to bring about welfare to the workers as much as the need to ‘regulate’ them which lay at
the heart of such measures. Apart from regular employment, decasualization introduced a number
of social security benefits to a job which was both dangerous and tedious and is looked upon as
one of the reasons why Bombay port and dock workers happen to be one of the best paid working
class today in India. And yet, besides providing for regular and better working conditions for
registered workers, decasualization had peculiar effects at ports and it is very significant to
understand it in comparative perspective. In the process of its implementation to make work
regular, it gave way to a ‘structured casualness’ perhaps because of the restrictive nature of the
28
Times of India, 15
th
March, 1898, p. 5
18
[Pleasedonotcite]
legislation that did not apply to a large chunk of workers. The effect of legislation has always been
such that it while it legalizes a particular category, it also renders others as absolutely illegal.
Casual workers continued to be employed by employers either as break legs or replacements and
were increasingly used as ‘strike-breakers’. Welfare and work benefits were not extended to them
as they remained an invisible category of workers. The decasualization legislation froze categories
like ‘casual’, and ‘permanent’ and made the registered worker increasingly ‘casual’ towards work.
There now existed workers who were more permanent than the others. As noted in the case of
London docks, the conception of the idea of decasualization was different for labour leaders on
the one hand and employers and dock companies on the other29. On the one hand, the unions looked
at the labour movement against casual employment as something that would enable the restriction
of dock employment to dock trade union members and also, as far as possible, equalize the
opportunities for employment among trade union members. On the other hand, the employers
visualized it primarily as a means that would enforce the separation of the ‘respectable’ working
class from the residuum, restrict employment to a few and weed out the residuum from being a
potential political threat. It was perhaps this dichotomy that the decasualization schemes had
succeeded in bringing about by creating a hierarchized structure of permanent, semi-permanent
and casual workers who also stood divided in their demands. Also, under the garb of regularizing
work and removing intermediaries, it also took away the linkages, networks and support
mechanisms that were so central to the dock and working class neighbourhoods. This division
within the workforce was a common a feature of the decasualisation experiment at other ports too.
Decasualization in Mombasa led to a growing differentiation of the African workforce detached
29
Jones, Gareth Stedman. Outcast London, Oxford: Claredon Press, 1971, p. 317.
19
[Pleasedonotcite]
from the “‘enervating’ connection to tribal Africa”30 and cut off from their specific connections to
hiring and work due to which gangs lost their collective identity and role in the labour process.
Even in the case of New York, while the core of the permanent workforce had retained and
improved their position in employment, decasualization did not really make lives better for a
sizeable group which still found infrequent work at New York docks31.
Containerization and the Return to the ‘Casual’
Yet another change in the mid decades of the twentieth century was that of Containerization. The
first container ship was built in 1956 by the American trucking entrepreneur Malcolm Maclean.
Containerization rapidly spread throughout the 1960s and by the 1970s the container had become
the dominant mode of global transport. The concept of containerization was introduced since the
1960s across the world and it is essentially a system of consolidating cargo in boxes and then its
transportation. This change in technology has not only reduced employment opportunities of the
workers but also brought to an end to the kind of work that had given dock labour its particular
character. The earlier arrangement which required a gang located at each hatch, capable of stowing
or unstowing individual items of various shapes suddenly ended due to containerization and this
has made a big difference to dock work ever since. What this change brought about was the
disassociation of cargo handling from the docks into the container ships. According to Roy
Mankelow, “it heralded the demise of the traditional London docker with his hook, and the arrival
of the docker-technician operating sophisticated equipment to load and unload containers from the
30
Cooper, Frederick. On the African Waterfront: Urban Disorder and the Transformation of Work in Colonial
Mombasa, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987, p. 158
31
Jensen, Vernon.H. “Decasualization of Employment on the New York Waterfront”, Industrial and Labour
Relations Review, Vol. 11, No.4, July 1958, p. 550
20
[Pleasedonotcite]
new dedicated container vessels”32. This has had a huge influence on the shared experiences about
‘work’ across the ports and encouraged global solidarities among dock workers.
Containerization demanded uniformity in dimensions of freight containers to facilitate
compatibility with various modes of transport for smooth and quick movement of goods across the
international borders. One begins to hear about proposals for container berths in Nhava Sheva in
Bombay and at Haldia in Calcutta by the late 1960s in order to adapt Indian ports to the new
technological development33. Containerization is said to have arrived in India by 1973. The
number of containers handled at the Bombay port increased from a mere 133 in 1972-74 to over
100,000 in 1980-8134. By 1970s the pressure on shipping companies to speed up the process of
containerization at Indian ports was immense35. Simultaneous to this process grew worker’s
agitation and the All India Port and Dock Workers’ Federation’s main demands at this time
remained higher wages, increased bonus, compensation to cargo-handling workers for loss of
earning owing to containerization, permanency of temporary workmen and subsidized housing36.
However, not much was done by the port authorities in terms of housing and the percentage of
cargo handling workers housed by the port trust remained extremely low. Even within the Bombay
Port Trust employment, a mere 9.03% of shore labour was allotted housing by the Port Trust37.
Compensation for the loss of earning was finally given in 1981 to cargo handling workers
employed by the Port Trust, registered stevedores and the Dock Labour Board38. However, the
32
Mankelow, Roy. “The Port of London, 1790-1970” in Sam Davies et al.(eds). Dock Workers: International
Explorations in Comparative Labour History, 1790-1970, Vol. I, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, p. 365
33
Times of India, Dec 13, 1968, p. 7
34
Times of India, June 17, 1981, p. 5
35
Times of India, Sept 25, 1976, p. 13
36
Times of India, Aug 3, 1978, p.3
37
Bombay Port Trust, Administration Report 1988-89
38
Times of India, June 17, 1981, p. 5
21
[Pleasedonotcite]
casuals and workers employed by other agencies remained invisible and their plight has worsened
under containerization.
Despite assurances by the government in the wake of liberalization that more and more dock
workers would be decasualized and the avenues of promotion would be broadened to various
categories of port and dock works, there was a general decline in 1980-90 in permanent
employment at all the ports, and contract employment had doubled. There were as many as 12,500
contract workers working in the Bombay Port Trust due to which regular workers did not get
employment39. Contract workers were easy to get, had to be paid nothing towards welfare and
security funds etc. nor demanded extra allowances to carry on work, and hence were more
economical. Liberalization brought in its wake a number of private ports which posed competition
to existing ports. Mumbai Port has ever since faced stiff competition from the Jawaharlal Nehru
Port. The setting up of the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), also known as Nhava Sheva in
1989, which was earlier conceived of as a satellite port to divert sea cargo traffic and thus reduce
congestion in Mumbai, further pushed the informalization of labour. The JNPT had its own
independent labour handling system through private developers. The work of stuffing and
destuffing containers was not done by port trust workers, but contract workers employed through
private contractors and labour cooperatives. Moreover, increasingly the bulk of cargo was being
diverted to Nhava Sheva, and the employers saw no incentive for decasualizing a number of
workers who still worked at the port without any job security. A constant demand was to treat the
Nhava Sheva port as an integral part of the Bombay Port Trust40. The Nhava Sheva port authorities
39
Noronha, Ernesto. “Bombay Dock Labour Board 1948-1994: From Insecurity to Security to Insecurity?”, Economic
and Political Weekly, p. 4856
40
Times of India, Oct 15, 1991, p. 6
22
[Pleasedonotcite]
have repeatedly been called upon by the trade unions to make provisions for a permanent
workforce instead of exploiting the workers through contractors.
By the 1990s BDLB appeared to be in a huge financial crisis and there were several agitations
against the Board for withholding the payment of minimum guaranteed wages and attendance
allowance to registered workers. As a result of this, on February 25, 1994, the BDLB got itself
departmentalized and merged with the Port Trust which brought an end to an institution
responsible for regulating work and conditions of work. A number of schemes for encouraging
voluntary retirement were encouraged and re-training and re-deployment were practised to meet
operational requirements instead of recruiting additional men.
There is again a global trend that can be seen with this new wave of modernization at ports. The
struggle by the Liverpool workers against the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company (MDHC)
stands very close to the case of Bombay41. The National Dock Labour Scheme, which protected
terms and conditions, benefits and wages of dock workers all over the country was abolished in
1989. This paved way for new employment contracts and attempts by the company to accumulate
as big a reserve army of casual workers as possible to crush the permanent workforce. Liverpool
dockers have resisted it ever since and have been supported by international actions, against ships
and lines using the port of Liverpool as their existed among dockers a deep empathy against similar
processes worldwide. The Modernization and Mechanization agreement at some of the major U.S.
ports which surrendered the hard-won job control in return for generous retirement bonuses and
pensions is again a reflection of a similar process. Quite obviously, the experiences of labour in
the face of such technological advances may not be similar across the ports as for in regions of
41
Sharma, Mukul. “ ‘The Flickering Flame’ of 500 Liverpool Dockers”, Labour File, Vol.3, No. 9, Sept 1997
23
[Pleasedonotcite]
high underemployment, increased productivity and mechanization on the dockside translated into
something quite different from what it meant to regions where there are other activities capable of
absorbing labour. And yet, workers response to ‘labour rationalization’ measures in the twentieth
century is worth a study.
Forging Local & Global Solidarities
Positioned between the land and the sea, dock workers interacted not only with other workers in
the city but sailors who arrived at the docks in ships. Being the first to work in a globalized
workspace and hence the “forerunners of today’s migrants”42, these lascars and seamen brought
stories and languages from world over which influenced the dock workers in several ways of its
own. “The presumption that Indian seafarers were undependable peasants drawn from villages
who turned to the sea for seasonal employment prevailed for a very long time and the maritime
labour market was indistinguishable from the wider casual labour market at Indian ports”43. A
number of dock workers were in fact working at the docks waiting to get a chance to explore the
seas as lascars. In this respect too, the system of owing allegiance to a gang leader helped. These
gang leaders were mostly very influential and known to the gang leaders recruiting lascars. Most
of the time these men were also part of the same neighbourhoods that the seamen used to retire
into after a journey.
42
Ghosh, Amitav. “Of Fanas and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail”, EPW,
Vol. 43, No.25, 2008, p. 58
43
Balachandran, G. Globalising Labour? Indian Seafarers and World Shipping, c. 1870-1945, New Delhi: OUP,
2012, p. 10
24
[Pleasedonotcite]
Thus, the neighbourhood itself became an interesting space where different kinds of solidarities,
linkages and networks were forged. These solidarities were constantly reflected both at the
worksite and neighbourhoods where workers working in a gang often chose to live together or a
gang leader chose men out of the same neighbourhood. Infact the worksite and the neighbourhood
also many a times came to be intertwined as reflected in areas like Girangaon, Mazagaon etc.
which lent the city’s working class consciousness a unique dynamics of its own. Dock work
provided for a unique kind of solidarity among various gangs to each other, gangs with their leaders
and among the gang members themselves. Social relationships were built on ties of kinship,
language, hometown, religious practice, and city experience which were further reinforced by the
shared use of residential common spaces. Quite evidently, this solidarity is not attributable solely
to the trade union movement which is sometimes understood as the single movement that shaped
and lent voice to the several solidarities.
Apart from living near the docks, dockworkers also lived in mixed neighbourhoods in various parts
of the city. Although migration into the city mostly occurred within the social networks of kinship,
caste, village etc., it were spaces like these where the worker took on newer urban identities. There
were several instances when the whole working class struck work together. Ravinder Kumar in his
work on the Textile Mill Strike of 1919 clearly shows how an isolated group of strikers who were
mill hands at the Century Mills, was suddenly transformed into a substantial crowd of militant
workers44. He says that this was possible not only because of the proximity of the mills to each
other but also because of the mixed neighbourhoods in which these workers lived which offered
44
Kumar, Ravinder. “The Bombay Textile Strike, 1919”, IESHR, 1971, Vol.8
25
[Pleasedonotcite]
ideal conditions, given an accumulation of grievances and a piling up of frustrations for a working
class explosion. The discontent spread from the mill workers to other workers in the city. Even the
workers employed at the Royal Indian Marine dockyards and by the railways struck work and
demanded an increase in wages. The General strike of 1928 and most of the labour unrests of the
1920s and 30s saw workers in various occupations expressing their grievances, organizing unions
and taking industrial action. The strike began from a particular industry and it was only a matter
of little time when it became a general one. Bombay docks became a common site where such
solidarities were both shaped and played out.
Docks are unique in the way both worksites and neighbourhoods connect workers to a larger
community of the working class. It was common to find at ports workers from various parts of the
world together. A letter addressed to the Secretary, Government of Bengal would suggest a form
of protest by dock workers at the Calcutta port on the arrival of 14 distressed seamen from
Singapore looking for work45. The Shipping Master reported that inorder to alleviate distress and
to find employment for seamen, the Board of Trade had recognized the discretion of officials
abroad in sending men to ports at which it was likely they may find employment in preference to
sending them home, and it was in exercise of that discretion that these men reached Calcutta.
Hence the possibility of finding seafarers from other countries working among dock workers
always existed. The Mazagaon dockyard, according to the Labour Investigation Committee Report
employed some Chinese fitters for specially skilled work through contractors46. The Chinese
presence in Bombay is particularly interesting as a number of them found employment as
carpenters in the Bombay docks. The impact that the presence of these groups has on a port city
45
46
Marine Department, Vol. 56, Compilation 79, 1902
Report of an enquiry into conditions of labour in dockyards in India, Labour Investigation Committee, 1946, p.3
26
[Pleasedonotcite]
makes it both cosmopolitan and fascinating in unique ways. The presence of Irish dock workers
among the London dockers, or African-American, Irish, German, Scandinavians and Italians as
dock workers at New York provided a distinct flavor to the port city and does open up possibilities
of studying these port cities as part of global history. These interactions definitely did bring out
racial, ethnic stratification which were played out in conflicts between the groups at the work site
but it also provided solidarities of a distinct nature where the workers were united not merely by
the common experience of a workplace or a single occupation, but by the fact of being ‘workers’.
While positioned between the land and the sea, dock work not only offered an interaction of dock
workers with workers employed in the city and the sea faring men at sea, rather it revealed a unique
interaction among workers globally. The Seamen’s Docker’s, Inland Waterways and Allied
Workers’ Trade Unions International (Maritime Federation of the World) under the World
Federation of Trade Unions laid down as early as 1949 with the principle of uniting all unions of
workers in the maritime industry and to forge close friendship and cooperation among the seamen,
dockers and waterways workers of all countries47 is a fitting example of such solidarity. To those
who believe that dock workers are no more important as work at ports is highly mechanized, it is
important to realize the role they play in the economy. The solidarities that they are capable of
building globally are both unique and praiseworthy. Their reaction to any political, social or
economic issue worldwide talks at length of their networks and it is significant to also look at the
strategies deployed by these workers in global politics. These solidarities have been visible at
different moments in history and continue even today. The support by Calcutta and Bombay
dockers along with those from China and Australia for the struggle in Indonesia against Dutch
47
AITUC Papers, Subject File no. 331, p. 150
27
[Pleasedonotcite]
imperialism in 1945 was phenomenal48. Similar was the reaction by these dockers during the IndoPakistan conflicts of 1962 and 1972 when they boycotted any ship carrying arms, ammunitions,
military hardware to Pakistan49. They were actually responding to an earlier boycott by American
dock workers which had led to an imposition of embargo on arms shipment to Pakistan.
Dock workers have also been instrumental agents in struggles against apartheid. There was an
immense anti-apartheid pressure by Melbourne dock workers to cancel the South African cricket
tour to Australia in 197150. The dockers here unanimously refused to load or unload South African
ships while the cricket team was in Australia. One would also remember how dock workers in
various countries refused to unload South African goods as a battle against apartheid. Emulating
this solidarity against apartheid, very recently in Durban, members of the South African Transport
and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU), refused to unload a ship carrying Israeli cargo.51
Dockworkers here were responding to Israel’s three-week attack on Gaza which had left a number
of Palestinians dead. In their act, these dock workers reminded us that international solidarity is
still not a thing of the past.
Conclusion
This paper in talking particularly about Bombay opens up larger questions like that of
similarity/dissimilarity in work processes, labour recruitment, legislative action and labour
solidarity across ports. The ‘casualness’ that dock work symbolized was common to every part of
the globe and so were events leading up to its regulation. Technology has played a significant role
at docks as in other industries. However, instead of simply understanding technology as being the
48
Times of India, Oct 20, 1945, p.7
Sagardeep, March 1973, p.7-8
50
Times of India, April 23, 1971, p. 16
51
Mike Marqusee, “Intervention from below”, in The Hindu Magazine, 8th March, 2009.
49
28
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most important factor which brings about a change in labour regime, we need to also acknowledge
and understand the conditions it brings to the forth. It is significant to see how changes in dock
work itself as also such political articulations like strikes and unionism affected global systems of
labour. It is imperative to see technology as giving rise to conditions where labour matters had to
be taken seriously. While decasualization led to the formalization and regulation of the recruitment
process, another change in the form of container ships reversed the process and encouraged casual
and contractual employment. This duality in the labour regimes presents an extremely interesting
case and it is only when we analyze it in comparative perspective that a history of connections
through dock workers would be possible. It is crucial to see the responses of workers worldwide
to legislation and regulation. While Bombay Port Trust claims port workers are today one of the
best paid section of the working class, for a chunk of workers at the port and also across the world,
the struggle against casual, non-union and low paid employment continues. While every port
worked with its own specific labour forms, these workers were united in the nature of dock work
itself. These workers were integrated into the community of a global working class in such a way
that a piece of legislation, strike or even a small event somewhere created a ripple effect and
affected trade and movements across the globe. This realization of a unity not as individuals rather
as dock workers offers possibilities of an exciting and incredible global history.
29