One was a gaunt, hawk-nosed Australia native; the other, a compact, peppery New York Irishman. Each was an effective leader, but in appearance, personality and operating style, Harry Bridges and Teddy Gleason were poles apart. The contrasts extended to the U.S. longshore unions they dominated for much of the 20th century.

Born less than nine months apart, both men lived past 90. Bridges and Gleason spent their early years on the docks when cargo was loaded by pallet and sling. Both men lived to see the shipping industry forever transformed by containerization, and both had much to say about how the change was carried out.

Teddy Gleason		Harry Bridges

Bridges rose to prominence first. A merchant seaman from Australia, he settled in San Francisco in the 1920s, became a longshoreman, and in 1934 led West Coast dockworkers in a strike that led to creation of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union. He headed the ILWU until his retirement in 1970. It was a tumultuous tenure. The ILWU was expelled from the Council of Industrial Organizations in 1948 for alleged Communist influence, and Bridges spent two decades fighting government attempts at deportation.

On the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, the more-conservative International Longshoremen’s Association had different problems. Under Joseph Ryan, the ILA’s “president for life,” the union’s New York locals were infested with criminal elements. This led to the ILA’s explusion in 1954 from the American Federation of Labor, which set up a rival union to try to supplant the ILA.

Because ports are essential to international trade, The Journal of Commerce covered both longshoremen’s unions closely. Reporters such as George Panitz, Charles Davis and Alan Schoedel provided detailed analyses of contract negotiations and intra-union disputes, especially those involving the ILA, which struck at the end of every contract expiration from the end of World War II through 1971. More recently, as ILA negotiations have become more peaceful and Asian imports have become more critical to the U.S. economy, JoC longshore labor coverage has emphasized the ILWU.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, Gleason’s name was familiar to JoC readers. Born in 1900 in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, he followed his father and grandfather onto the docks as a teenager. Gleason was elected a local officer in the 1930s and general organizer in 1947. After Ryan was ousted in 1953, Gleason became the ILA’s executive vice president and dominant power. He was instrumental in winning the ILA’s readmission to the AFL-CIO and became the union’s president in 1963, just as containerization was taking hold.

Longtime ILA President Thomas W. “Teddy” Gleason with President Reagan and Labor Secretary Ray Donovan in the early 1980s.

Because containerization is extremely capital-intensive, container ship operators were willing to grant generous settlements to avoid work stoppages. The leaders of both the ILA and the ILWU realized this, and took full advantage.

On the West Coast, Bridges in 1960 negotiated a landmark Mechanization and Modernization Agreement, which secured monetary and job guarantees in exchange for allowing employers to automate cargo-handling. The Vietnam War, and the subsequent boom in Asian imports, kept ILWU members employed, and since the M&M deal the ILWU has called only one coastwide strike — a 134- day walkout in 1971-72 over pay and jurisdiction.

Gleason faced a more difficult challenge. His primary interest always was New York, which shifted rapidly to containers in the 1960s and 1970s. But bulk and breakbulk cargo remained important in many ILA ports, particularly those in the Gulf. In a series of contracts, Gleason won steady increases in pay and benefits, including a guaranteed annual income for dockworkers displaced by containerization. He also shrewdly tied container ship operators to the ILA with a “subscription agreement,” which said that if they used ILA labor in any port, they had to use it at all ports they called where the union was present.

Largely through Gleason’s negotiating prowess, the ILA was able to maintain its hold on container carriers and help the industry struggle through the surplus-manpower problem caused by automation. Bulk and breakbulk cargo was a different story. After the ILA almost effortlessly won big across-the-board raises in its 1983 contract, bulk and breakbulk operators turned to non-ILA alternatives. The union’s Gulf and South Atlantic locals have yet to recover from the blow.

Under Gleason’s successor, John Bowers, the ILA has cooperated with management to retain existing jobs and to try to regain work lost to non- ILA competitors. Recent contracts have been negotiated, without strikes or rancor, before the old ones expired.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union — the union shortened its name in the mid-1990s — is unchallenged on the West Coast. There, Bridges’ successors have won contracts that have made the union’s members among the nation’s highest-paid blue-collar workers.