Alma
Bishop pointed to her rubber safety shoes. She got them through the union, and
they can’t be bought at any ladies boutique.
A
Giants fan and multi-generational San Franciscan, Bishop held a job as a union
carpenter with the Local 22 before becoming a Longshoreman. A hard drinker who
swears like a sailor and enjoys dainty jewelry, she embodies the
often-forgotten, old-school working class of San Francisco.
Bishop
is in her early 50s, tanned from the sun and relatively petite. For work, she
wears a navy utility jumpsuit with reflective patches, zipped on the right-
traditionally, the man’s side.
Once,
a Longshoreman’s work was done by hand. Today, workers operate machines to
unload cargo.
“We
took the Oracle off at Pier 80, little by little,” Bishop said, referring to
the America’s Cup boat. She also helped unload pieces of San Francisco’s
incoming Central Subway.
Everything is gigantic in scale- the cruise liners
docking and reloading at Pier 80, the cranes and forklifts used to pick
containers off the vast ships and the ocean itself.
And everything is dangerous, from the huge paths the
machines cut across the land, air and sea, to the heavy loads of cargo.
“When you go to work, you’re never promised tomorrow,”
Bishop said. “A friend of mine just passed away, fell off the upside of a ship
and was knocked with a pole.”
She
tore her arm when a piece of machinery dragged her dozens of feet across the
docks. She said the machine’s operator was too busy on his cell phone to
notice.
“People
are very selfish there,” she said of the waterfront, where the competition is
fierce and distractions can take a life.
Six
months after Bishop’s operation, the arm tore again. Since the accident, she
has not been able to operate heavy machinery, forcing her out of the most
lucrative jobs.
In a union, jobs are received by rotation. Only the
highest-level workers, the A books, have their pick. The rest, including the B
books like Bishop, the IDs and the casual workers, must go to the boards at the
International Longshore and Warehouse Union Hall on North Point and Mason
streets, near San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf.
A dock worker becomes a Longshoreman with a capital L
if they’ve been accepted into the union. People sometimes spend decades as a
casual worker before graduating to even an ID level. It took Bishop ten years
to make B book.
“It’s
almost like the horse races,” Bishop said of the scene at the boards, rattling
off the different categories- whole board, dock board, crane board,
“non-skill-can’t-drive anything board.”
The hall,
a large, geometric building, looks like a retro spaceship from the outside and
a bus depot within. Among other things, it’s known as a concert hall,
where the legendary Trips Festival introduced the Grateful Dead to the masses
in 1966.
The
flex shift begins in the dark, at 6 a.m. Before heading to the boards,
workers call the dispatchers for the day’s availability.
“Hello, brothers and sisters,” a
smooth male voice began before launching into a list of vacant positions. “It’s feast or famine. Get it while you can.”
At
the hiring hall, dockworkers receive numbers from the dispatcher on pieces of
paper, and nothing is computerized. For the union, resisting technology means
preserving dispatcher’s jobs.
Supposedly,
Bishop said, if anything happens to her on duty, her children will receive her
book, guaranteeing a lifetime’s work. The union harkens back to not just
the socialist 1930s, but to a more ancient age of guilds and fraternal orders.
But
union dues don’t come cheap. Members pay $250 a month, and are fined $50 for
every missed meeting. For workers struggling to get consistent, well-paying
work, the fees are high.
“But,”
Bishop repeats. “They pay for your shoes.”
