Developing such rules, a top ILWU official admitted later, “took no end of imagination and invention.” The union regarded them as indispensable to preserve jobs and maintain uniform costs among competitors. The stevedoring firms with which the ILWU negotiated were willing to accept the rules to avoid the alternative of endless wildcat strikes. Louis Goldblatt, the union’s longtime secretary-treasurer, claimed that the stevedores actually liked many of the rules, because the ship lines paid them a premium of 30 percent for each man-hour worked. Perversely, the more man-hours required to
...more
