Katy Fox-Hodess
Lecturer in Employment Relations and Research Development Director of the Centre for Decent Work at the University of Sheffield
A really important theme that I think is often not examined is thinking about labor holistically at a port, not just in terms of the dock workers, but in terms of all of the workers who are dealing with the cargo, especially the truckers and warehouse workers, who often are immigrants or racialized, and would have very poor conditions.
Katy Fox-Hodess
Lecturer in Employment Relations and Research Development Director of the Centre for Decent Work at the University of Sheffield
Dockworker unions are overwhelmingly men. So the Spanish Union, the English union and the Swedish union have made efforts to bring women in. In different ports, they might have 10 or 15% women. So still very, very low. And in some ports, in some countries, it's entirely male dominated.
Katy Fox-Hodess
Lecturer in Employment Relations and Research Development Director of the Centre for Decent Work at the University of Sheffield
Within Europe, the biggest threats to dockers in the past 10-20 years have come from states and from the European government, rather than from employers. So there was in the early 2000s, the attempt through the port directives to deregulate port labor across Europe and introduce a system where seafarers could unload ships rather than Dockers.
Katy Fox-Hodess
Lecturer in Employment Relations and Research Development Director of the Centre for Decent Work at the University of Sheffield
The environmental impacts in ports is definitely something that dockworkers are very concerned about. Because the people who are most affected by the contamination that's put out by idling ships or idling trucks are the workers of the port. […] The rates of asthma and the rates of various cancers [is higher], the lifespan or the projected lifespan is much lower for dockers in Europe.
Katy Fox-Hodess
Lecturer in Employment Relations and Research Development Director of the Centre for Decent Work at the University of Sheffield
Bio
Dr. Katy Fox-Hodess is a Lecturer in Employment Relations and Research Development Director of the Centre for Decent Work at the University of Sheffield in England. An expert on global dockworker trade unionism, she is a co-founder of the International Labour and Logistics Research Network. Her academic work has been published in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Work, Employment and Society, and Latin American Politics and Society, among others. Photo credit Sergio Souza.
