The Wire, S02E05- Undertow (Patreon)

Good morning, Patrons! It's time for The Wire, and I'm sorry for forgetting to post Steven Attewell's primer link and info at the end of the last Wire episode. So if you don't want to be spoiled, I will include the text for this episode at the bottom, and if you'd like to read the whole thing I've included a link to the Dropbox file. I'd also like to drop in Steven's website for you to visit, http://www.racefortheironthrone.wordpress.com I confess to Roshawn that I'm having a little trouble getting into this season, but she assures me that's perfectly normal and not to worry because I'll get how it all ties together soon enough. I'm trusting you, Roshawn! Thanks for listening, everyone, and I'll see you tomorrow with Empire! Episode 5: “I pledge the fifth commandment” Speaking of the Teamsters…back in the late 30s, Harry Bridges of the ILWU announced a “march inland” to organize the warehouses (hence the W in ILWU). Dave Beck, a leader of the Western Conference of Teamsters, viewed this as a threat to the Teamsters (as Beck wanted to unionize “everything on wheels,” which would conflict with Bridges’ campaign to organize warehouse drivers); as a political conservative (although still a very militant union leader), Beck also saw Bridges as a dangerous radical. He fought Harry Bridges’ campaign in a protracted series of organizing battles up and down the West Coast that got very very ugly – at one point, Beck threatened to boycott any warehouse represented by the ILWU. In the 50s, both Beck and Bridges were investigated repeatedly by Federal authorities – Beck pled the Fifth 117 times during the Senate hearings on Organized Crime led by Bobby Kennedy, whereas Bridges was repeatedly threatened with deportation from ’39-’53 over whether he was an actual member of the Communist Party, to which he pled the Fifth and was jailed for contempt of court. “Shit, you don’t even need a subpoena no more.” In 1975-1979, following the Velachi hearings and the passage of the 1970 RICO Act, the FBI launched a major campaign against Mafia infiltration of the ILA, targeting the whole of the ILA from Miami to New York. 56 members of the ILA were indicted, along with 43 others on the management or shipping agent side – 68 were convicted. In this, and a number of subsequent investigations in the 1980s and 1990s, a number of ILA Locals entered into consent decrees with the Justice Department to resolve their legal issues – which gave them authority to oversee the unions’ operations. “We’re here through Bobby Kennedy, Tricky Dick Nixon, Ronnie “the Uniobuster” Reagan.” In the 1950s, Robert Kennedy investigated union corruption as part of his campaign against the mafia. In 1971, the ILWU went on an epic 130 day strike – which Nixon attempted to break by using the Taft-Hartley Act’s mandated “cooling off” periods. Ronald Reagan is perhaps best known in union circles for breaking the PATCO air controller strike in 1981, which set off a wave of lockouts and anti-union campaigns in the 1980s. Ironically, Reagan was endorsed by the ILA’s president Teddy Gleason in 1984, although the vast majority of the labor movement supported Walter Mondale. “the new technology has changed everything” My adviser, Professor Nelson Lichtenstein has done a lot of work on how technological change has shaped manufacturing and transportation. I’ll talk more on the impact of containerization later, but I’ll just note that the data involved in these databases, from the container numbers to individual bar codes, have been used by retailers and shippers to perfect a system of “just-on-time” delivery, reducing the time that goods spend on the shelf (thus, improving efficiency and turnover of stock for retailers) and using the consumer information to demand ever more extreme price cuts from manufactures, helping to drive the global “race to the bottom” in manufacturing. At the same time, “just-on-time” is incredibly vulnerable to disruption – the whole system depends on goods moving with no interruption lest retail locations open without inventory. “three ro-ros, four containers, I got all my cards up, including long numbers, and we’re still short.” So this gives us a good sense of what makes for enough work on the docks. Seven ships in one day and the longshoremen are fully employed, even understaffed – one ship a day, and you have widespread underemployment. https://www.dropbox.com/s/17ghussodyludsz/A-Primer-on-Unions-for-The-Wire-Season-2%20%284%29.docx?dl=0