Hello, this is the second video in the series called "The Human Stories of Dock Labor,â
where we'll take a look at the history through books that are in the park's Maritime Research
Center. A description of what's in the Center can be viewed by going online to the Keys
Catalog. The URL is listed below. https://keys.bywatersolutions.com/
In this installment we'll discuss the first half of
this book,â Shape-Up and Hiring Hall; A Comparison of Hiring Methods and Labor Relations
on the New York and Seattle Water Fronts,â by Charles P. Larrowe. This was written in
1955 shortly after the shape-up was outlawed on the New York and New Jersey waterfronts.
So, what was the shape-up? Well, imagine if you were a longshoreman, you were looking for work.
Anywhere from 4am to 7am in the morning you go down to the dock, and a hiring foreman comes
out and blows a whistle, and then everyone "shapes." They go into a semi-circle, and
the hiring foreman chooses who he wants. Well, who did he want? Well, if you agree to kickbacks
of giving over to him up to 25% of your already low wages, you were chosen. If you were deemed
a troublemaker, meaning if you had any union sympathies, if you were deemed a "red" or
a "troublemaker" in any other way, you were not chosen. Now, how did the hiring foreman
know that you agreed to the kickbacks? Well, here's a toothpick and you can do a little
secret signal to him by putting the toothpick behind your ear. That was a typical way he
would know. And if you were not chosen you were just out of luck. Now, this shape-up
hiring system was done all over the world, but there was an added problem on the New
York and New Jersey waterfronts, and that was there was a very large mob influence in
the hiring practices and in the waterfront union at the time, which some historians said
was a union only in name. That was the ILA, at the time the International Longshoreman's Association.
Although the president wasn't himself a mobster, he was known to hire mobsters and be an enabler
of mob rule on the waterfront. So this is the kind of degrading system that you had to go
through. Well, for a longer discussion of the shape-up, feel free to go to the blog
on our park's website. There's a series of blogs called "Around the Horn," and that URL
is listed below. https://www.nps.gov/safr/blogs/around-the-horn.htm And feel free to make comments, continue discussion, ask questions in the
comments section on the blog and here. Well, thanks for watching. On the next one we will
go over the second half of this book, âThe Hiring Hall,â so stay safe everyone.