Page 197 - 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. 197
10
The Labour Factor: The Docks of Trieste
and Koper through the Global Crisis
Loredana Panariti
University of Trieste, Department of Economics, Business, Mathematics
and Statistics
Introduction
It was 26 April 1956 when Malcolm McLean’s ship Ideal-X left the Port of
Newark in New Jersey for the Port of Houston with fifty-eight aluminium
truck bodies and a regular cargo of liquid bulk. From that moment, the
‘container’ became a new, innovative system for the movement of goods,
determining, with its diffusion, new types of ports, ships, cranes, stor-
age structures, vehicles, trains, and an increase in organizational com-
plexity. Moreover, it resulted in fundamental changes in port expansion
and the rewriting of the port geography in different countries, with the
beginning and flourishing of the business in previously unknown loca-
tions, and its decline in others. The container has become the undisputed
standard in maritime transport and has laid the foundations of a new era
for the transport of goods, thus generating a profound transformation of
production structures and economic relations over the entire planet. As
Mark Levinson notes in his container history: ‘Low shipping costs helped
make capital even more mobile, increasing the bargaining power of em-
ployers against their far less mobile workers’ (Levinson 2006, 4).
The introduction of containers, in fact, represents a watershed for
the organization of work; however, it is not just about what happened in
the port areas: such a significant decrease in transport costs has affected
the domestic production of several goods. These goods have often become
cheaper to buy or to produce elsewhere. Also, the speed of movement,
with ships stationed for shorter periods in ports, has not been without
consequences. For example, companies that had introduced work organ-
ization models inspired by the Toyota Production System, such as ‘just
Mellinato, Giulio, Aleksander Panjek, eds. 2022. Complex Gateways. Labour and Urban History of Maritime
Port Cities: The Northern Adriatic in a Comparative Perspective.
Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem. https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-191-9.197-216
197
The Labour Factor: The Docks of Trieste
and Koper through the Global Crisis
Loredana Panariti
University of Trieste, Department of Economics, Business, Mathematics
and Statistics
Introduction
It was 26 April 1956 when Malcolm McLean’s ship Ideal-X left the Port of
Newark in New Jersey for the Port of Houston with fifty-eight aluminium
truck bodies and a regular cargo of liquid bulk. From that moment, the
‘container’ became a new, innovative system for the movement of goods,
determining, with its diffusion, new types of ports, ships, cranes, stor-
age structures, vehicles, trains, and an increase in organizational com-
plexity. Moreover, it resulted in fundamental changes in port expansion
and the rewriting of the port geography in different countries, with the
beginning and flourishing of the business in previously unknown loca-
tions, and its decline in others. The container has become the undisputed
standard in maritime transport and has laid the foundations of a new era
for the transport of goods, thus generating a profound transformation of
production structures and economic relations over the entire planet. As
Mark Levinson notes in his container history: ‘Low shipping costs helped
make capital even more mobile, increasing the bargaining power of em-
ployers against their far less mobile workers’ (Levinson 2006, 4).
The introduction of containers, in fact, represents a watershed for
the organization of work; however, it is not just about what happened in
the port areas: such a significant decrease in transport costs has affected
the domestic production of several goods. These goods have often become
cheaper to buy or to produce elsewhere. Also, the speed of movement,
with ships stationed for shorter periods in ports, has not been without
consequences. For example, companies that had introduced work organ-
ization models inspired by the Toyota Production System, such as ‘just
Mellinato, Giulio, Aleksander Panjek, eds. 2022. Complex Gateways. Labour and Urban History of Maritime
Port Cities: The Northern Adriatic in a Comparative Perspective.
Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem. https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-191-9.197-216
197
