New Orleans dock workers and unionization

Dockworkers in New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century often coordinated their unionization efforts across racial lines. The nature of that coordination has led some scholars to conclude that the seeming interracial union activity was in fact biracial: a well-organized plan of parallel concerted activity with coordination and support between the groups, but with a clear divide along racial lines.

Under this framework, cooperation was seen less a matter of ideological interracial solidarity among the working class and more a matter of pragmatism so that the working conditions of each distinct group would improve.^[1]

As discussed below, several factors may have allowed biracial union efforts to succeed at the port of New Orleans, including (a) the independent strength of the black^[2] unions that compelled whites to enter into collaborative agreements with them; (b) the prior history of racial division or segmentation of labor; (c) the relative power of employers to control jobs; and (d) overall employment relations.^[3]

Because dock work was generally unskilled (with the notable exception of screwmen) and of a short-term contractual nature, an employer could readily replace workers who refused to bend to the employer's terms.^[4] Black laborers were both numerous and available for work. In this type of competitive market, blacks and whites were pitted against each other by ship owners in an effort to keep wages down: if whites would not work for a lower wage, owners would look to blacks who would.^[5] Following this reasoning, "[o]nly control of the labor supply and solidarity across trade and racial lines could reduce this possibility. That meant that alliances between unions and, most importantly, between black and white unions, were essential to reducing competition between different groups for jobs."^[6] Alliances between the groups allowed both to exercise more control over the terms and conditions of their work, including wage rates and production expectations. Union leaders of both races recognized the difference that an alliance made in those terms and conditions, prompting a pragmatic continuation of the biracial system.