From ‘Supplementary Seagulls’ to ‘Cut Price Casuals’: Changing Patterns of Casual Employment on the New Zealand Waterfront 1951–1997

Abstract

By focusing on waterfront casualism in New Zealand, this article contributes an historically grounded, industry-level case study to the literature that has documented the growth of contingent forms of employment in Australasia. Although recent developments on the waterfront are often viewed as part of a general trend towards casualisation, the industry has a number of distinctive features that render it a special case. Historically, the waterfront possesses characteristics which make it an ‘extreme’ form of casual labour market, such that the regulation of casual employment by securing control of the labour supply has always been a central organisational goal and power resource of unions. With respect to New Zealand, the current employer-initiated process of casualisation cuts to the core of remaining union influence on the waterfront. This article situates recent conflict over this process in the context of changing patterns of casual employment since the 1951 waterfront dispute. These patterns are explained in terms of shifts in the preferences and relative power of the key actors on each side of the labour market during three periods, which encompass significant technological change and labour market deregulation. Increasing casualisation, it is argued, indicates a weakening of union control over the labour supply, which in turn represents the most recent phase of waterfront reform.