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UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Automation and San Francisco Class “B” Longshoremen: Power, Race, and Workplace Democracy, 1958-1981 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4p3250n8 Author Lim, Seonghee Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Automation and San Francisco Class “B” Longshoremen: Power, Race, and Workplace Democracy, 1958-1981 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History By Seonghee Lim Committee in charge: Professor Nelson Lichtenstein, Chair Professor George Lipsitz Professor Gaye Theresa Johnson Professor Cedric Robinson December 2015 The dissertation of Seonghee Lim is approved. _____________________________________________ Cedric Robinson _____________________________________________ Gaye Theresa Johnson _____________________________________________ George Lipsitz _____________________________________________ Nelson Lichtenstein, Committee Chair December 2015 Acknowledgements This dissertation could not have been written without the political and legal struggles and personal testimonies of the B-men who formed the Longshore Jobs Defense Committee and fought for eighteen years to clear their names. Nothing motivated me more to push through writing this dissertation than listening to their life stories, their feelings of betrayal, and their hopes for justice. Special thanks must go to E. Randall Keeney for her recorded interviews with a majority of the B-men and for preserving the tapes, partial transcripts, and photographs of the B-men in the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley. I am also deeply indebted to Arthur Brunwasser, the lawyer of the B-men, who talked for hours with me about the B-men’s legal case at his home in San Francisco and gave me valuable behind-the-scenes information on the vicissitudes of their long and extraordinary battles in the courtroom. He also read multiple chapters discussing the case and provided me with helpful comments. Without the assistance of many archives specialists and librarians, whose aid paved the way through their resources, this project would have been impossible. I want to thank especially Robin Walker in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Library, Charles Miller, Christopher Magee, and other staff members in the National Archives at San Francisco and at Kansans City. I also wish to thank the librarians in the Bancroft Library, the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment Library, and the Institute of Governmental Studies Library at the University of California at Berkeley and the Interlibrary Loan Service in the Davidson Library at the University of California at Santa Barbara. iii All staff members in the History and the Black Studies Departments at the University of California, Santa Barbara, deserve much more gratitude than I have ever expressed for helping me go through all the necessary administrative tasks. I especially thank Darcy Ritzau for her guidance, encouragement, and warm heart. I also wish to acknowledge the grants, scholarships, teaching assistantships, and teaching opportunities that I received from the History and Black Studies Departments, the Center for Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy, and the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment of the University of California. I was fortunate to have had an opportunity to study with and learn from many faculty members at the University of California at Santa Barbara. I am especially grateful for my committee members who showed unwavering belief in me and encouraged me. Professor George Lipstiz inspired me by constantly reminding me of the importance of the grassroots collective activism of oppressed people for social justice and the significance of the knowledge that they produced in the process. From selecting the dissertation topic to its revision to its completion, he also guided me to find answers to my own inquiries. Professor Gaye Theresa Johnson’s scholarship, teaching, and activism also deeply influenced my work. She provided me with a powerful tool to understand structural racism and how to challenge it. Professor Cedric Robinson shared his unfathomable knowledge with me every time I had a question and led me to think about the linkages between my questions and larger contexts. My greatest debt is to my advisor Professor Nelson Lichtenstein. I benefited from his generosity in hundreds of ways. He set aside limitless amounts of time for reading drafts of my work, including every revised version of my dissertation, and provided extensive iv comments. I also appreciate his unbounded patience with me whenever I became stubborn about my way of seeing the world. Finally, I must thank my friends, family members, campus and community activists who nurtured me intellectually and politically. During my entire time at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the campus service workers and their union organizers accepted me as one of their own in their organizing efforts and taught me what standing up for worker solidarity meant. I wish to express my appreciation to all of my fellow members of the following organizations: The Student and Worker Coalition, Option 4, Occupy Isla Vista, Coalition for Justice for Trayvon Martin, Coalition for Sustainable Communities, and Academic Workers for a Democratic Union. While I had ample assistance and support in writing this manuscript, any errors and omissions are mine alone. v VITA OF SEONGHEE LIM December 2015 EDUCATION Ph.D. University of California, Santa Barbara (U.S. History with Black Studies Emphasis), December 2015 M.A. Texas A&M University, College Station (European History), 2007 B.S. Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea (Food & Nutrition), 1994 FIELDS OF STUDY Modern U.S. History, Labor Studies, Comparative Race and Ethnicity, Black Radicalism, Modern European History PUBLICATION 2014 “Solidarity and Contradiction,” [Review of Yuichiro Onish, Transpacific Antiracism: Afro-Asian Solidarity in 20th-century Black America, Japan, and Okinawa (New York: New York University Press, 2013)], Against the Current Vol. 171 (July/August 2014). 2012 Review of Earning Power: Women and Work in Los Angeles, 1880-1930 by Eileen V. Wallis. Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas Vol. 9, No. 1 (Spring 2012): 154-156. 2008 “Voices of Asian Americans: Stories of Identity and Struggle,” [Review of Steve Louis and Glenn K. Omatsu, eds., Asian American: The Movement and the Moment (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2006)], Against the Current Vol. 23, No. 4 (September/October 2008), pp. 40-41. 2007 “Korean Unionists Protest Free Trade Agreement with U.S.,” Labor Notes, August 2007, No. 341, pp. 1, 6. PAPERS PRESENTED 2011 “Gendering the Picket Line during the Labor Dispute in Los Angeles, 1933-1939,” a paper presented to the 43rd annual conference of the Western Association of Women Historians, Huntington Library, San Marino, California, April 9. FELLOWSHIPS AND AWAREDS 2014-2015 Graduate Student Fee Fellowship, Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara 2008-2009 William H. Ellison Prize for the Best Graduate Student Research Paper, Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara vi 2008-2009 Research Mini Grant, Labor and Employment Research Fund PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT 2011-2014: Teaching Assistant, Department of Black Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara Spring 2011/Spring 2012: Teaching Associate, Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara 2009-2011: Teaching Assistant, Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara Summer 2007: Intern, Labor Education & Research Project (“Labor Notes”), Detroit, Michigan Spring 2006: Teaching Assistant, Department of History, Texas A & M University, College Station 1998 - 2000 Tutor, Jaenung Education Institute (JEI), Seoul, Korea 1994 - 1996 Computer Programmer, K&C Consulting Inc., Seoul, Korea vii ABSTRACT Automation and San Francisco Class “B” Longshoremen: Power, Race, and Workplace Democracy, 1958-1981 By Seonghee Lim This dissertation studies the meaning of workplace democracy by examining San Francisco Class B Longshoremen whose status came into existence in 1958 as part of the automation and containerization plan agreed upon by the waterfront employers and the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU). The B-men who toiled at the point of production as second class workers in this transitional period were in a unique position to see problems emerging from the mechanization plan and understand the exploitive nature of new work processes that arose from the abandonment of the old work rules. Although the main motivation for the waterfront employers and the longshoremen’s union behind the recruitment of B-men was to create a flexible but disciplined labor force that would make a smooth transition to automation, by organizing themselves for equal status and better working conditions, the B-men challenged the roles imposed upon them. By focusing on the black longshoremen who disproportionally filled the ranks of B-men and who lost their jobs without just cause and subsequently organized various actions for their reinstatement, this study provides a lens for viewing structural racism in the process of viii automation and demonstrates the irrepressible self-activism of working people for respect,