Working Waterfront

Working Waterfront. Hudson River Park. , The modernization of Pier 76 as a container shipping terminal marked the end of an era for the type of labor needed at the pier. New York's busy waterfront was once teeming with unskilled labor jobs, which made the piers an ideal place for new immigrants to find work. The waterfront became the domain of Irish, German, and Italian immigrants, who joined African Americans who had always worked there. Workers, known as longshoremen, loaded and unloaded ships to and from adjacent warehouses., Dock work was laborious, dirty, dangerous, and unreliable. Work was only available when there was a ship in port, and there was always a surplus of available workers, so work was never guaranteed. The uncertainties of dock work increased as machines became faster and more profitable than manual labor., [photo captions:] , Longshoring was a dangerous and physically demanding trade that didn't always require previous experience or skill. Men would use wooden rollers, hand trucks, and brute force to roll cargo on and off ships. Large crews of men were required to handle this work, making manual labor the largest overhead expense., Longshoremen seeking work would wait at the pier until a ship needing to be loaded or unloaded arrived. The men would "shape-up," forming a horseshoe around the hiring foreman ore stevedore. Workers could be chosen individually or as part of a gang made up of several men. Racism was a common problem, and corruption in the form of kickbacks and nepotism developed as a result of this hiring method., Due to advancements in technology as early as the 1920s, methods for moving cargo included the use of wooden pallets and fork lifts.