Flexibility and Labour Market Restructuring: The Waterfront Industry

Abstract

This paper will begin by identifying some of the main features of the industry and their implications for how the employment relationship is constituted, and the specific type of unionism that emerged, on the waterfront. It will then characterize the nature of the labour market that developed within the industry, drawing in a critically selective fashion upon a typology of labour markets developed by Fligstein and Femandez (1988). Finally the main continuities and discontinuities in the labour market following deregulation will be identified.