Off the waterfront: the long-run impact of technological change on dock workers

El-Sahli, Zouheir; Upward, Richard

Abstract

We investigate how individual workers and local labour markets adjust over a long time period to a discrete and plausibly exogenous technological shock, namely the introduction of containerisation in the UK port industry. This technology, which was introduced rapidly between the mid-1960s and the late-1970s, had dramatic consequences for specific occupations within the port industry. Using longitudinal micro-census data we follow dock-workers over a 40 year period and examine the long-run consequences of containerisation for patterns of employment, migration and mortality. The results show that the job guarantees negotiated by the unions protected dock-workers' employment until the guarantees were removed in 1989. A matched comparison of workers in comparable unskilled occupations reveals that, even after job guarantees were removed, dock-workers did not fare worse than the comparison group in terms of their labour market outcomes. Our results suggest that job guarantees provided a safety net which reduced the cost to workers of sudden technological change.

Citation

El-Sahli, Z., & Upward, R. (in press). Off the waterfront: the long-run impact of technological change on dock workers. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 55(2), https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12224

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 1, 2017
• Online Publication Date: May 9, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jan 30, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: May 10, 2019
• Journal: British Journal of Industrial Relations
• Print ISSN: 0007-1080
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-8543
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 55
• Issue: 2
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12224
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/860020
• Publisher URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjir.12224/full
• Additional Information: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: El-Sahli, Z. and Upward, R. (2017), Off the Waterfront: The Long-Run Impact of Technological Change on Dockworkers. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 55: 225–273. doi:10.1111/bjir.12224 which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjir.12224/full This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
• Contract Date: Jan 30, 2017