Shape-Up and Hiring Hall: A Comparison of Hiring Methods and Labor Relations on the New York and Seattle Waterfronts

In Shape-Up and Hiring Hall, Charles P. Larrowe offers a penetrating comparative study of one of the most turbulent industries in American labor history: longshoring. By juxtaposing New York’s notorious “shape-up” system with Seattle’s pioneering hiring hall, Larrowe reveals how contrasting methods of employment distribution shaped not only day-to-day work on the docks but also the very character of the unions representing waterfront labor. His analysis traces the intertwining of racketeering, political corruption, and employer complicity in New York, while documenting the innovative, if contested, experiment in centralized hiring that took root on the West Coast. Through a carefully structured framework of evaluation, he assesses efficiency, fairness, and stability in these systems, offering a rare look at how labor markets evolve under pressure from law, industry, and rank-and-file action.

Drawing on years of research, extensive documentation, and interviews with longshoremen, employers, and public officials, Larrowe situates the hiring hall debate within the broader narrative of American labor reform. His study culminates in an examination of the 1953 New York reforms and the creation of government-run hiring halls—one of the most dramatic state interventions in labor relations of its time. Part labor history, part institutional analysis, Shape-Up and Hiring Hall is both a chronicle of labor militancy and corruption on the waterfront and a broader commentary on the possibilities and limits of reform in casual labor markets. For scholars of labor history, industrial relations, and urban politics, this book remains an essential account of the forces that shaped East and West Coast longshoring into such divergent paths.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1955.