ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the casual configuration of dock labour, a configuration defined not in chronological terms, but rather in terms of the development of the labour process in dock labour. Dock employers often seem to be the exception, ruled out of broader analyses in which 'Fordism' tends to be seen as the paradigm. In the area of employment relations, the hiring and maintenance of the labour force was dominated by the two features: the ubiquity of casual employment and the prevalence of sub-contracting of work tasks. The significance of casualism and sub-contracting also applied to work relations, by which is meant the 'way technology and social processes are organised at work'. The analysis of industrial relations in the dock industry thus far has been focused on a relatively narrow chronology, and for the most part on the heartlands of advanced capitalist production.
