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Social Context: What Was Being Walled In or Walled Out
         
 

Social Context: What Was Being Walled In or Walled Out?
Union Context

Longshoremen were one of the first labor groups to organize in San Francisco. The Riggers’ and Stevedores’ Union was established in 1853, and continued in existence until 1919. Although its strength and fortunes varied over time, the union was a force throughout that period for wage standards, and to some extent working conditions. However, if you were never picked for work, the hourly wage was irrelevant. So, the overriding system of casual labor meant the hiring process was actually a more critical question than wage levels.

That process was both archaic and perfect for exploitation. Traditionally, longshoremen would gather, or shape up, on the pier when a ship arrived. There a hiring boss could choose the men he wanted. Those who were not chosen could move on to other piers, or could remain in the vicinity on the chance of more men being needed. Although the Riggers’ and Stevedores’ Union at times was able to enforce a closed shop—that is with only union members eligible to work—it had no ability to govern the choices made by hiring bosses among union members. So, bribery and favoritism governed.

This traditional hiring system assumed independent knowledge on the part of workers of which piers had ships at them and in what stage the work was at that location. With open piers, this information was available to anyone who looked. But with the advent of bulkhead buildings, the bosses acquired more control over this basic information. Further, the system depended on free access for prospective workers to the piers in order to shop for work. This too was now reduced, and with it the opportunities for free communication between workers.

In the traditional hiring system, there was a direct spatial relationship between workers, the work, and the city at large. The bulkhead buildings altered that relationship. The first of these, at Pier 35, was constructed in 1916. In that same year, the longshoremen’s union had been forced to settle a strike without attaining its goals. In response to the strike—the first ever to include all west coast ports—so a signal of growing union solidarity— maritime employers launched a campaign for the "open shop" that is the right to employ non-union workers. Physically the monumental new structure at Pier 35 closed off the "shop" or workplace, but in doing so it became symbolically—later literally—a bastion of the employers’ open shop plan.

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Cinematic and graphic portrayals of the shapeup.
 
   
  The workplace walled off; Pier 35 with bulkhead building
 
The workplace walled off; Pier 35 with bulkhead building
 
 
         
Physical Context: The Waterfront Historical Context: The Wall Social Context: What Was Being Walled In or Walled Out? An Interpretation What Are We Preserving?