Page 183 - Mellinato, Giulio, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2022. Complex Gateways. Labour and Urban History of Maritime Port Cities: The Northern Adriaticin a Comparative Perspective. Koper: University of Primorska Press.
P. 183
A Respected Profession After All: Work Structures and Self-Perceptions ...
work continues to carry a gendered connotation. It further suggests a low
reputation of dock workers also taken up in other accounts. When talking
about the beginning of their professional lives, very few of my interview
partners mentioned that they decided voluntarily to take the job. Rather
than choosing dock work, it provided a good way to gain a lot of mon-
ey for hard work, as many emphasized. As work was rare in those years,
many interviewees started an apprenticeship arranged by relatives, ac-
quaintances, or other contacts. While some came to the port after they
went to sea and to settle down, it offered a new professional orientation
to workers with different professional backgrounds.
One reason for the mainly negative ascription by others was the for-
merly low social and occupational status of the docker, as casual workers
and those on short-term contracts shaped the image of the ‘uncultivat-
ed, raw, drunkard worker’ (Grüttner 1984, 273), which was constructed,
transported, and maintained through various channels over decades and
with which numerous stereotypical associations are interwoven. As no
specific expertise was required for dock work in the post-war years, any-
one who could get their hands dirty and was willing to work hard could be
trained to work in the port until the structural changes of 1975 set in. As
already mentioned, in most cases GHB staff carried out the simplest and
at the same time hardest and dirtiest tasks, another reason for the cor-
respondingly bad image GHB workers had to withstand for a long time.
In the immediate post-war years, media depicted dock workers
through their marginal social situation and political developments. Until
the 1970s, they represented typical workers as a large, hardworking fami-
ly sharing collective values, and authors referred to the harmonious, soli-
dary, and down-to-earth coexistence (Figure 3). In addition, the Hamburg
dock worker was portrayed as Northern German. This is remarkable as
the first so-called guest workers arrived in the port as early as 1959, and
almost one third of the GHB-employees were of foreign origin in 1979
(Gesamthafenbetriebs-Gesellschaft 1979, 12).
With structural transformations, this image partly changed. In May
1987, Hamburg celebrated its 798th port anniversary. On this occasion,
the local paper Abendblatt reported to a wide audience on the transfor-
mation in an article titled ‘The silent revolution’ (Sillescu 1987, 3). The
subtitle went: ‘The port is dead. Long live the port’ and underlined the
port’s central position in the city’s economy and as an employer. However,
the ‘Silent Revolution’ referred to the manner of transformation, at least
183
work continues to carry a gendered connotation. It further suggests a low
reputation of dock workers also taken up in other accounts. When talking
about the beginning of their professional lives, very few of my interview
partners mentioned that they decided voluntarily to take the job. Rather
than choosing dock work, it provided a good way to gain a lot of mon-
ey for hard work, as many emphasized. As work was rare in those years,
many interviewees started an apprenticeship arranged by relatives, ac-
quaintances, or other contacts. While some came to the port after they
went to sea and to settle down, it offered a new professional orientation
to workers with different professional backgrounds.
One reason for the mainly negative ascription by others was the for-
merly low social and occupational status of the docker, as casual workers
and those on short-term contracts shaped the image of the ‘uncultivat-
ed, raw, drunkard worker’ (Grüttner 1984, 273), which was constructed,
transported, and maintained through various channels over decades and
with which numerous stereotypical associations are interwoven. As no
specific expertise was required for dock work in the post-war years, any-
one who could get their hands dirty and was willing to work hard could be
trained to work in the port until the structural changes of 1975 set in. As
already mentioned, in most cases GHB staff carried out the simplest and
at the same time hardest and dirtiest tasks, another reason for the cor-
respondingly bad image GHB workers had to withstand for a long time.
In the immediate post-war years, media depicted dock workers
through their marginal social situation and political developments. Until
the 1970s, they represented typical workers as a large, hardworking fami-
ly sharing collective values, and authors referred to the harmonious, soli-
dary, and down-to-earth coexistence (Figure 3). In addition, the Hamburg
dock worker was portrayed as Northern German. This is remarkable as
the first so-called guest workers arrived in the port as early as 1959, and
almost one third of the GHB-employees were of foreign origin in 1979
(Gesamthafenbetriebs-Gesellschaft 1979, 12).
With structural transformations, this image partly changed. In May
1987, Hamburg celebrated its 798th port anniversary. On this occasion,
the local paper Abendblatt reported to a wide audience on the transfor-
mation in an article titled ‘The silent revolution’ (Sillescu 1987, 3). The
subtitle went: ‘The port is dead. Long live the port’ and underlined the
port’s central position in the city’s economy and as an employer. However,
the ‘Silent Revolution’ referred to the manner of transformation, at least
183
