The Place-based Work of Global Circulation: Maritime Workers, Collaboration, and Labor Agency at the Seaport

Abstract

How does place influence the work of global circulation, and how might that work enroll hitherto overlooked modes of collaboration, power, and agency? Geographers recentering labor in analyses of global production and circulation emphasize the labor–capital relation and employer control versus employee resistance. This can limit empirical and political prospects. Instead, we foreground two additional relationships: collaborative relationships of trust between workers across roles and organizations who coordinate circulation together; and relations between workers and place that unfold as tasks are completed amid challenging oceanic and climatic forces. Such relationships are forged by the need to collaborate and provide the foundation for transverse exercises of labor agency. To illustrate, we take to the water with maritime workers (marine pilots, tugboat operators, and liners), observing how shipping circulation is maintained. Seaports are idiosyncratic places—gateways and chokepoints for global circulation experiencing oceanic and atmospheric extremes. Coordination problems are pervasive. Disruption risks require maritime workers to collaborate in place to ensure circulation occurs through place. Demonstrating how the ocean's lateral forces mediate circulation, we emphasize three features of an on-water, place-based labor process: (1) choreographed coordination, (2) situational awareness, and (3) combined multidimensional skills. Navigating a labor process conditioned by the sea, port workers collaborate to manage risks and maintain circulation. In so doing, they also preside over risk and circulation. We argue for collaborative relationships and transverse expressions of agency to feature more prominently in analyses of the diverse, place-based, and interconnected labor upon which capitalist circulation depends.

Key words:

• maritime workers
• labor agency
• transverse power
• seaports
• shipping
• circulation
• skills
• critical logistics
• disruption risks

How labor shapes material circulation in the global economy is a renewed focus in economic geography. This interest coincides with the fragmentation of production, the rise of complex logistical systems facilitating movement on land and sea, and the unfolding effects of evolving technologies, environmental crises, and worsening sociospatial polarization (Cowen 2014; Gregson Crang, and Antonopoulos 2017; Chua et al. 2018; Danyluk 2019). Researchers emphasize the antagonistic capital–labor relationship, assessing the balance between forms of managerial control and modes of worker resistance (Jonas 1996; Carmichael and Herod 2012; Joyce 2020).¹ Such studies of work-related conflict are vital for understanding the restlessness of capitalist economies, including theorizing the role and differentiated agency of workers, where agency is a foundation for power (Warren 2019).

Nevertheless, approaching labor process and agency through a dynamic of employer control versus employee resistance risks neglecting other forms of interaction that shape the conduct of workers and the lived experience of work. For scholars interested in labor’s role in shaping the capitalist space economy, an overriding focus on antagonism and conflict limits alternative insights into the “complex negotiation of order” characterizing place-based, lived experiences of work and employment (Edwards and Hodder 2022, 221).² Such complex negotiations encompass interclass politics (Gough 2002) and workforce dynamics related to labor processes, spaces of work, and affiliated groups of workers who create capitalist value. This article contributes to the economic geographic study of labor control and agency by examining the place-based, collaborative work and workers who undergird capitalism’s circulation processes (Neilson, Rossiter, and Samaddar 2018; Baglioni et al. 2022). Deploying a labor geography approach attuned to workers as active subjects of analysis, we consider the more-than-antagonistic relations comprising the activities of work and how “relationships of commonality” (Baglioni et al. 2022, 2) are built within and across groups of workers who labor collaboratively to ensure safe, reliable circulation in time and space.

Beyond the labor–capital relationship are two key dynamics shaping the experience of work: intralabor relations among and between groups of workers who coordinate circulation; and the interconnections between workers and place—the latter encompassing heterogeneous human and nonhuman actors, including biophysical environments (Campling and Colás 2021; Werner 2022). We argue that such relationships form the basis for worker’s transverse modes of action—aspects of power relations that cut across horizontal and vertical hierarchies “maintained in conventional organizations,” occupations, roles, and workplaces (Allen 2003, 124; see also Hoffman 2022). Attentiveness to transverse expressions of labor agency can uncover prospects for worker empowerment that warrant greater attention in analyzing the diverse, place-based, and interconnected labor upon which the global circulation of goods depends.

Circulation, a recurring feature of the capitalist space economy, cannot be taken for granted. Below, we examine labor’s active role in making the ocean-dependent circulation of material commodities possible. Across oceanic forms of labor from seafaring to stevedoring, the conditions, tasks, and terms of employment have transformed through evolving technologies, the accumulation strategies of global shippers, and industrial relations discrepancies between working at sea and on land (Terry 2009; Carmichael and Herod 2012; Featherstone 2023). Nevertheless, since firms across supply chains strive to optimize physical circulation and achieve economies of scale, maritime ports remain challenging and idiosyncratic places where complexities inherent to spatial mobility are encountered daily (Hesse 2020; Danyluk 2023). What coordination work is necessary to ensure ships physically circulate through seaports to places beyond, amid challenges, disruptions, and inherent safety risks? And what forms of agency arise from such coordination work, experienced among workers, laboring in propinquity? This article answers these fundamentally geographic research questions by going on the water with three groups of port-based workers: marine pilots, tugboat (or tug) crews, and rope line operators. Focusing on relations among an interconnected workforce, we examine transverse exercises of agency emanating from lived experiences of laboring in place to ensure circulation occurs through place.

Port-based workforces encompass different employers, positions in chains of command, pay, and job conditions. Through close interaction, collaboration, and coordination, workers oversee the circulation of ships at maritime ports. The workforce of a seaport interacts daily on the job, using skilled, professional judgments and exercising control over labor processes conditioned by place, including oceanic forces and prevailing weather (Campling and Colás 2021). Our analysis shows how ocean space represents an active and constitutive force in maritime logistical arrangements that facilitate the geographic stretching of commodity production and circulation networks. At maritime ports globally, the sea and weather create significant challenges to physical circulation. Workers must collaborate and interact as a team to keep ships successfully moving through a port, revealing how labor’s social and technical dimensions extend beyond a binary dynamic of control versus resistance. Working in a high-pressure, safety-critical domain means that margins for error are slim while the consequences of mistakes are massive (Li and Pilz 2023). Because the stakes are high, maritime workers at ports must collaborate to ensure circulation and adapt to unforeseen disruptions—the mutual and immutable goal being the safe, reliable circulation of ships. In so doing, those workers also exercise power over circulation and risk mitigation. Refining place-based, multidimensional skills and cementing expert status through their everyday labors, port workers collectively preside over mobilities at the seaport. Consequently, even when working for multiple employers and with immense external commercial pressures, we show how workers mark ports as their economic space.

In adopting a place-based labor geography approach to examine circulation work, our article has two aims. First, we contribute conceptually to debates in economic geography on labor control, agency, and the process of global circulation. Notwithstanding concern for the welfare of workers in a competitive and cutthroat world economy, most analyses remain oriented toward capital as the active protagonist in structuring economic space. There is less focus on workers’ lived experiences, especially with each other in mutual negotiations around the labor process, since it unfolds in place (Warren and Gibson 2023). Nowhere is this more apparent than in studies of labor among globalized, networked configurations of production and circulation. As price-sensitive competition intensifies, lead firms in shipping and logistics have consolidated power, repositioning maritime ports as interchangeable nodes, increasingly containerized, automated, and under the command and control of hypermobile capital (Parola et al. 2018; Danyluk 2019). Through a worker-centered analysis of the daily operations at a mixed-commodity, globally integrated seaport, we argue that recent interpretations overstate the singularity of shipping capital’s directional power and underplay the significance of place. Ports and their shipping operations function in a dynamic ocean and rely on a skilled maritime workforce. These features make them sites where labor organizing and campaigning persist. More than mere localized detail from a single place, the port worker example sheds light on how labor process and place are coconstitutive, and how multiple threads link workers together, with possibilities for building powerful alliances (Carmichael and Herod 2012; Fox-Hodess 2020). As we elaborate, distinctive sources of agency arise from mutual, collaborative actions undertaken by workers via place-based tasks of coordination. Worker agency does not solely occur in the form of unionized action in moments of labor–capital conflict but also unfolds through everyday labor processes where workers collaborate across organizational and occupational categories to overcome problems and manage risks—using and honing skills that knit together via necessary interactions to coordinate shipping movements in time and space.

Second, we approach the labor process as a lens to view interactive and collaborative circulation-focused work in challenging environments (cf. Gandini 2019). We reveal how the forces of the sea and weather impress upon commercial ports, shaping a complex labor process for physical circulation that relies upon interactions, coordination, cooperation, and decisive actions among skilled workers in different roles and organizations. That in turn empowers those workers. A collective labor power unfurls in place and underpins the “geographically distributed functions” of actually existing capitalist economies (Baglioni et al. 2022, 2). Relationships that emerge when workers act together in roles and exercise agency with others are examples of transverse modes of power (Arendt 1958, 1961) that warrant greater attention in research on the labor required to facilitate global circulation.

Next, we describe the labor geography perspective adopted for the research before elaborating on transverse agency and the prospects for worker empowerment within collaborative, place-based labor processes. The article then discusses economic geography’s growing concern with physical circulation and labor’s struggles across stretched-out logistical arrangements. After outlining research methods and the context for fieldwork, we present empirical analysis in three sections focused on explaining port-based circulation work: (1) choreographed coordination of services, workers, and collaborative tasks; (2) situational awareness among port workers who regularly experience hazards and manage multiple risks in a safety-critical domain; and (3) combined multidimensional skilling encompassing recognized technical expertise, local environmental knowledge, and tacit, interpersonal skills accrued through experience. The article concludes by examining the significance of the research for understanding labor’s role in physical circulation as a collaborative and collective achievement. Our argument is for collaboration and transverse expressions of agency within and between groups of workers to feature more prominently in economic geographic analyses of the diverse, place-based, and interconnected labor required to achieve safe and reliable circulation.

How Ports Work: A Labor Geography Perspective

This article draws conceptually from labor geography and its recognition that working people are social actors capable of shaping the capitalist space economy to better meet their material needs. Following its inception as a conceptual-political project in the 1990s, early analyses examined the successful actions of unions and showcased labor’s collective, institutional agency, a force on which capitalism relies to create and capture surplus value (Herod 2001). Apropos of our empirical case below, ports were key early empirical sites.³

One criticism was a perceived overemphasis on successful outcomes, especially by male-dominated, unionized workforces occupying the leading edge of labor movements (Strauss 2020). Constraining the agency of working people are falling union coverage, regulatory changes disciplining unions, diminished collective bargaining and individual contracts, segmented labor markets, digital-led platformization, and insecure gig-economy work (Johnston 2020; Coe 2021). Meanwhile, feminist geographers have advanced labor geographies by critiquing how worker exploitation reproduces social differences, and acknowledging work and workers beyond the neatly bounded workplace, explaining the social foundations of agency, including the diverse activities constituting work outside formal employment contexts (McDowell 2015; Dutta 2020; Mezzadri 2021). Scholars have also queried the social efficacy of actions taken by workers and unions (Mills 2019). Labor agency expressed in one place can negatively affect those laboring elsewhere in global value chains (Bair and Werner 2017) and involve troubling moral footings (Hastings 2016). In short, worker agency is not always a unifying feature of labor politics.

Nor is agency necessarily bound to antagonistic relations born from conflict. While capital–labor relations have long been marked by multiple forms of conflict (Edwards 1986), opportunities also exist to explore complementary angles and contexts that articulate other relations and interactions across a diverse world of work (Coe and Jordhus-Lier 2023). Agency is not solely expressed through labor’s capacity to scale-up in conflict with capital but also through transverse relations among workers that knit together in place and across space (Massey 2005). Even amid the neoliberalization of labor markets, there are counteracting tendencies toward socialization: collaboration, coordination, and “cooperation between social actors” in place-based communities (Gough 2002, 405). While formal campaigns and public protests catalyze solidarity in moments of conflict, everyday socializations also permeate the spaces and times of day-to-day life and work: building mutual bonds of trust (Murphy 2006), and shared experiences among workforces, across firms and economic sectors. We pay attention to such prosaic sources and modes of agency socialized within the sphere of work.

Theorizing Transverse Labor Power

In seeking to diversify labor geographies of control and agency, we draw on a conception of power, which following Allen (2003, 58), focuses on relationships and collaborative actions that “cut across conventional organizational lines and practices.” Such a conception is sensitive to the diverse geographies of relationality, networks of association, proximity, and reach (Johnston 2020). It is an approach that also echoes economic geographic work on collaboration within organizations and agglomeration economies, including the role of trust (Murphy 2006) and untraded interdependencies that “make possible many of the traded transactions of the contemporary economy” (Storper 1997, 39). At one level, what we document below are the “positive strengths of collaborative association” (Allen 2003, 196) and relationships of trust evolving within the realm of work as workers undertake complex tasks in a risky environment. At another level, those forms of collaboration and trust provide the basis for a distinctive modality of power, especially in the context of economic settings like maritime ports, which are shot through with power struggles and industrial conflict (Carmichael and Herod 2012). According to Arendt (1970, 53), power is not generated via instrumental acts like forceful control, arbitrary rules, or violent suppression, which usually transpire when “power is being lost” or appears in jeopardy. Instead, different modes of power are constituted relationally through negotiations between social actors whereby a level of authority comes to be recognized, not merely claimed (Arendt 1961). In our case, we explore how port-based workers secure “recognition as an authority” (Allen 2003, 58), including from co-workers, employers, and shipping customers. The basis for their authority is specialized knowledge, extensive training, expertise, and demonstrated skills. The port worker case exemplifies Massey’s (2005) argument that power is practiced before it is possessed.

We do not, however, intend to flatten power relations within the category of labor where division, distrust, and conflict can be rife (Herod 2001; Warren 2019). Our goal is to illustrate how exercises of power with, not simply over, other workers are prominent in labor processes. For Arendt (1958, 1961), power is approached via its potential to have productive effects, which are grounded in, and kept alive through, negotiations, communication, and collaborative association. The transformative potential of power rests in the ability to act in concert with others, to achieve a common goal or purpose. The relevance of such an approach for labor geography is the realization that power arises when workers come together to “pool their collective energies” (Allen 2003, 58)—where action-taking dissects the hierarchical “relationships maintained in conventional organizations and practice” (Allen 2003, 124). This perspective helps to understand how different groups of workers laboring in the same place but employed by various firms come together to achieve a common goal (Kleinheisterkamp-González 2023). In our case, the mutual goal is to passage ships and cargoes through the port and onward to places beyond—ensuring circulation despite seaports being idiosyncratic, volatile places where disruption risks and power struggles are ever present. The “networks of social interaction” among a workforce comprise transformative modes of power (Allen 2003, 125). Such a conception rejects a view of power as being merely produced through the centralization and mobilization of resources, which bend an opposing force to the will of another.

A transverse approach to power relations has much to offer labor-centered research in economic geography by moving beyond instrumental framings and centralized accounts that emphasize power over others as opposed to how power is developed, recognized, and exercised in relationships with others (Arendt 1961; Allen 2003; Hoffman 2022). Even amid the most hierarchically structured workplaces are “productive intervals or absences of potential discontinuity” (Gibson 2001, 641)—favorable circumstances to shape actions and evolve relationships (Silver 2003). Considerable opportunities exist for workers to exercise power in how they combine roles, collaborate in solving problems, and interact to complete tasks across the boundaries of the firm or industry.

Labor Process, Skill, and Place

To adequately explain how transverse labor power amasses, researchers must study the labor process—the actual doing of work within places and networks—and how roles, skills, common issues, goals, and everyday actions combine to establish relations between workers (Hampson and Junor 2010; Coe and Jordhus-Lier 2023). Labor process theory refers to the social and technical relations of work, including where such work takes place and how it is organized, as influenced by the imperative for capital accumulation (Herod, Rainnie, and McGrath-Champ 2007; Ellem 2016; Gandini 2019). Labor process researchers investigate struggles between labor and capital with a focus on the balance between worker autonomy versus capitalist control, job design, the (dis)aggregation of tasks, and the politics of skill (see Burawoy 1985; Peck 1996; Thompson and Smith 2010; Gandini 2019; Baglioni et al. 2022).⁴

While such themes capture unfolding capital–labor struggles, horizontal relations between workers, inside and across firms and sectors, are also fundamental to labor processes. Analyses of labor process across hospitality, care, retail, and other service-oriented work have accordingly emphasized the significance of workforce interaction. Tasks such as managing feelings, appearance, and behavior, making ethical judgments, and negotiating with clients, are never fully routinized because teamwork is crucial in lively social settings (Edwards and Hodder 2022). Hence a valuable source of insights for exercises of worker agency is collaboration: what workers do together in and between workplaces and firms; coordinating tasks across different roles; and in so doing, exercising transverse forms of power in the daily unfolding relations between workers (cf. Hoffman 2022).

Skill is a related source of leverage. Irreducible to a job’s technical requirements, skills are not fixed abilities formalized in qualifications (Collins 2003). More than mere resources that individuals possess or have valued in a transactional exchange on labor markets (Peck 1992), skill is processual and constantly unfolding. Specific skills are linked to roles in organizations (Coe and Jordhus-Lier 2023) but also deployed (and contested) collaboratively in an ongoing manner (Wood and Lehdonvirta 2021). For workers, skills invoke an open-ended undertaking, since the capability to complete tasks evolves in iteration with capital, other workers, material conditions, and technologies in place (Warren and Gibson 2023). While de-skilling is a common tactic of capital, workers’ embodied capacities nevertheless accrue over time—even among regimented labor processes—as experience working together accumulates in the concrete spaces of work and social life (Carr 2017).

Alongside their processual qualities, skills become a mechanism by which workers can express agency (Iskander, Riordan, and Lowe 2013). A focus on the lived experience of processual skills requires consideration of the capacities of working people to challenge and improve work–life situations in specific industries and places. From a labor geography approach, skills can be a source of agency, informing bargaining power, workplace associations, and expectations around employment (Mills 2019; Strauss 2020; Coe and Jordhus-Lier 2023). Such agency may find expression in how individuals or groups of workers collectively negotiate favorable arrangements with employers or, in workplaces marked by gendered and/or racialized divisions of labor, constitute the basis of ongoing discrimination (Warren and Gibson 2023). Conversely, progressive action deriving from skill arises through joint efforts in the matter-of-fact collaborative undertaking of tasks within a labor process. While individual skills are required for specialist tasks, their value to employers and their operations often only becomes apparent through collaboration. As workers labor in propinquity and problem solve in real time, skillful interactions provide the basis for exercising power over the work process in question, envisaging themselves as a team, even across different roles and employers.

This, in turn, brings to the fore questions of place and its influence on skills and labor processes. At maritime ports, for example, interaction and coordination among the workforce are critical for the continuous circulation and maintenance of mobility in an idiosyncratic context (Carr 2023). Port-based workers have multidimensional skills honed for their respective roles, but there is also a kind of group brain operating when working together to passage ships through spaces of the port. Such work constitutes a process of collective skilling as workers across organizations combine to create and mobilize diverse capacities to maneuver ships through a high-risk domain. More than individualized attributes for capital to buy and exploit, skills knit together in place and evolve in distinctive ways in socialized labor processes.

Among the ways that place shapes labor process is the need for workers to sense dynamic biophysical forces, assess material risks, and adapt accordingly—what is often described as situational awareness. In short, situational awareness is “the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning and the projection of their status in the near future” (Endsley 1995, 36). Unlike technical or muscle memory skills honed through repetition, situational awareness requires constant correspondence and real-time adjustment concerning unfurling environmental conditions (Ingold 2018; Gibson and Warren 2021). Situational awareness involves workers drawing on context-specific information, tacit and codified knowledge that is “accessible and can be integrated into a coherent picture . . . to assess and cope with a situation” (Sarter and Woods 2011, 456). Both time and space are crucial elements, directly influencing perception, comprehension, and responses where variables change in seconds or minutes (Wickens 2008). Situational awareness is critical to high-level competence and performance across a range of safety-critical domains, including medical surgery, emergency response, and civil aviation (Graafland et al. 2015; Li and Pilz 2023). In achieving global circulation, skilled situational awareness is needed to understand dynamic environmental conditions in challenging places. In the example below, situational awareness is core to a labor process shaped by the lateral forces of the sea (Campling and Colás 2021). Beyond an antagonistic relation with capital, labor relates intimately to place—the seaport—as workers collaborate to ensure safe circulation while mitigating risk. In this, we argue, lies a hitherto underacknowledged foundation for transverse expressions of agency.

Global Circulation, Ports, and Port Workers

We illustrate the relevance of a worker-centered analysis of this type through the on-water port-based labor process. Notwithstanding capital’s aspiration for unfettered mobility, the lived experiences of workers at ports and in shipping and logistics networks underscore the downsides and fragilities of global supply chains (Neilson and Rossiter 2010; Cowen 2014; Aspers and Sandberg 2020). Commercial ports entail “complex clusters of industrial activity” (Vonck and Notteboom 2016, 308) and are vital for the “reliable supply of a vast array of commodities” (Coe 2020, 2). Recent analyses suggest corporate shippers can revise oceanic routes in near real time, precisely calculating turnover times, cost/revenue ratios, and wielding structural power to play ports and port-based workforces against one another (Hall and Jacobs 2010; Jaffe 2015; Danyluk 2019; Chua 2022). Workforces have been segmented and inequalities in working conditions deepened, since price and transactional efficiencies render many areas of logistics a low-road labor market (Coe 2020; Baglioni et al. 2022). Outsourcing (known as 3PL in logistics), subcontracting, automation, and surveillance have worsened exploitation in cargo processing, road transportation, and warehouse distribution, with poor pay, physical bodily tasks, hazardous conditions, and greater precarity (Gutelius 2015; De Lara, Reese, and Struna 2016; Gregson, Crang, and Antonopoulos 2017; Barnes and Ali 2021). Exacerbating this are weakened union power and collective bargaining, relocation threats by firms, and exploitation of social differences (Peck 2016; Barrientos 2019).

Equally important are labor studies that identify weak points in logistical regimes. Because logistics equates to a constant demand to make things of value circulate (Watts 2019), there are pinch points, flaws, and vulnerabilities that organized labor can potentially expose and leverage for improvements in pay and working conditions (Coe 2021; Danyluk 2023). Workers possess structural power facilitated by a capacity to directly disrupt (choke) the distribution of goods, the circulation of capital, and the timely realization of surplus value.

Such chokepoints also intimate another crucial aspect of the circulatory labor process: the coordinated work on the water that ensures safe and reliable shipping movements. The port workers in focus here undertake such work. They are employed by various organizations with separate union-bargained agreements, different internal work rules and procedures, and varying levels of formalized skills training certified in qualifications. Our goal is to explain critical aspects of the labor process that generate transverse relations (collaboration between workers horizontally and within hierarchies of control), and thus intralabor agency, at the heart of a seaport’s daily operations. While an antagonistic labor regime exists in global shipping, and ports remain places of constant power struggles, inside maritime ports are intralabor and labor-place relationships that involve working in tandem. Ships are maneuvered in a context of challenging oceanic and atmospheric conditions. Our analysis attends to the everyday experience of laboring interactively at ports, elaborating the tasks and services linked together via dynamic relationships between ships and their crews, regulating authorities, port usage, weather, and the lateral forces of the sea.

Building on prior studies in other safety-critical domains, such as hospitals and civil aviation (Hampson and Junor 2010; Taylor and Moore 2015), labor process theory assists us in acknowledging how maneuvering ships through a seaport incorporates diverse tasks, interwoven into overarching procedures. Ports are a technical domain but depend heavily on the interaction of workers in different roles within and across various organizations. Technical work tasks are coordinated among teams and require complex, interpersonal interactions. Hence, below, we unpack the interactive work performed by skilled individuals who are simultaneously members of a “socially combined” labor power (Marx 1990, 1040). Linking tasks and skills in the labor process is critical to seaports because shipping operations occur in a dynamic, safety-critical environment that demands close interaction, coordination, and collaborative association from the workforce. These same conditions also facilitate the capacity of workers to socialize, consolidate expert status, and exert control over the necessary tasks of ensuring spatial movement while mitigating risk. Focusing on the voices of port workers, we reveal the collaborative work and multifaceted skills required to enable capitalism’s physical circulations despite the ever-present potential for disruption.

Research Methods and Context

Empirical research occurred at Australia’s Port Kembla (PK), a globally integrated, mixed-commodity seaport and working-class area of Wollongong (population 215,000), located fifty miles south of Sydney. Wollongong is known for its industrial workforce connected to PK, including export coal mining, metal manufacturing (steel, copper), and road/rail freight.

Historically, PK has been the focus of intense power struggles and industrial conflicts, dating back to the 1938 Pig Iron Bob dispute, which involved blockading exports to Japan that triggered the intervention of then Attorney General (and later Prime Minister) Bob Menzies (see Donaldson and Southall 2013). Industrial action in the region has long had a community flavor, too, concerned with health care, housing, and English-language services for the port’s multicultural workforce; the decade-long Jobs for Women campaign in the 1980s (against the BHP steelworks’ discriminatory practices); and more recently the 2015 Save our Steel community campaign. At the time of the research, some of the participating workers were embroiled in conflict with their employer regarding workforce casualization and protection of training standards. In what follows, however, we focus less on that conflict than on the aspects of transverse relationships of power—involving collaboration, authority, and control—emerging between port workers, across different roles and organizations (cf. Allen 2003).

Despite waves of restructuring since the 1980s, heavy industry remains significant. Logistical operations support an estimated five thousand direct and indirect jobs, including stevedoring, overland freight, and warehousing (New South Wales [NSW] Government 2022). The PK Steelworks, owned by ASX-listed BlueScope Steel, is the nation’s single largest industrial workplace by area and supports another 4,500 jobs. PK remains a busy industrial site, underlined by a record net profit for the steelworks (US$1.96B in fiscal year 2022), record ship visits and cargo volumes in 2022, and thirty-four projects in the planning or construction phase valued at US$4.98B (NSW Government 2022). In 2013, PK’s governance shifted when it was packaged with Sydney’s Port Botany and sold under a ninety-nine–year lease agreement. A private consortium of institutional investors paid US$3.55B for the lease, with day-to-day landlord management the responsibility of NSW Ports. Today, PK has eighteen berths and six independently operated terminals (Figure 1). The port’s land-side area covers 186 hectares, including 30 kilometers of rail line and an extensive internal road network for truck access. Because of PK’s proximity to Sydney, future planning anticipates expansion to handle substantial growth in freight volumes, including a container terminal.

Figure 1. A map of Port Kembla, NSW Australia showing the designated approach for commercial shipping vessels, the configuration of berths, and the location of onshore terminals. Source: Author’s analysis of NSW Ports data.

We compiled a comprehensive data set tracking commodity flows through PK between 2005 and 2022 (see Warren et al. 2022). Major exports include coking coal, unmilled grains, and metal ores; major imports are cement, passenger vehicles, and wheat (Table 1). In 2022, PK hosted 1,485 ship visits, with capacity to handle cape-size vessels up to 320 meters long, with 50 meter beams and 15 meter draughts. PK handles small volumes of containerized goods, which are instead processed at Port Botany. As a so-called dirty port, PK has capacity (zoned space, equipment and transport infrastructure, skilled labor) to handle diverse bulk, liquid, and project cargoes (e.g., construction and agricultural equipment, wind turbines) and is NSW’s only facility for handling imported automobiles. In 2022, PK directly contributed US$2.03B to gross state product—with the ratio of exports to imports by volume averaging 3:1 (NSW Ports 2023). In late 2022, construction was nearing completion on a new liquefied natural gas terminal, with several other significant developments planned for PK over the next decade, including renewable energy and defense projects. The local structure of maritime activities (foreign-owned), port-related services, adoption of technologies, and employment conditions are comparable to other mixed-commodity seaports in advanced economies.

Table 1 Major Commodity Flows at Port Kembla by Volume in Millions of Tons (Mt) or Numerical Units in 2022

Major Commodity Exports at Port Kembla		Major Commodity Imports at Port Kembla
Commodity	Volume (Mt)	Commodity	Volume (Mt)
1. Mineral fuels (including coal)	7.9	1. Other commodities	3.1
2. Grains (unmilled)	2.6	2. Cement	1.0
3. Other commodities	1.5	3. Motor vehicles (incl. other roll-on/roll-off cargo)	748,000 units
4. Iron and steel-based products	0.8	4. Petroleum oils	0.3
Average monthly export volume (2022)	1.1	Average monthly import volume (2022)	0.5

Source: Author’s analysis of transport for NSW data.

Our fieldwork began in November 2021 with semistructured interviews across a spectrum of port-based workers and managers, including NSW Ports, the Port Authority of NSW, terminal operators (grain, cement, minerals, roll-on/roll-off cargo), shipping agents, towage providers, lines services, stevedores, and overland freight providers (truckers and rail). After the initial interviews, we focused on businesses and workers directly involved in handling shipping movements through the seaport. Additional recruitment and semistructured interviews commenced in February 2022. By May 2022, we had conducted interviews with marine pilots (n = 6) and vessel traffic services (VTS) staff (n = 4) from the Port Authority, tugboat crews from private firm Svitzer (n = 7), rope liners (n = 2), stevedores (n = 5), terminal staff (n = 7), NSW Ports (n = 3), and shipping agents (n = 3). Workers shared union affiliation (Australasian Marine Pilots Institute, Maritime Union of Australia), with membership cutting across employers by occupation and training (e.g., uniting deckhands across pilot vessels, tugs, and liner boats). Semistructured interviews focused on workers’ backgrounds, roles and responsibilities, employment conditions, skills, and training. Following interviews, we gained permission to undertake participant observation with the Port Authority (a publicly owned corporation), towage services firm Svitzer (a subsidiary of Maersk), and Port Kembla Maritime Services (PKMS, [a family-owned lines business]). At the Port Authority and Svitzer, workers provided us with guided tours of land-based headquarters—opportunities to meet other workers, view operations and training spaces; learn about systems, equipment, and machinery; and services offered.

Alongside initial workplace tours and following safety inductions, between May 2022 and March 2023, we regularly traveled on the water with four marine pilots (on their cutter vessels), two tugboat operators, and a five-person lines crew. While initially solely observational due to our lack of proven seafaring skills, in time we gained opportunities to participate in basic tasks, including casting off, directing approaches to berths, and awaiting ships; notifying deckhands on instrument readings (e.g., engine temperatures, fuel use), conducting equipment checks, recording coordinates and time logs. Semistructured interviews and guided workplace tours were recorded and transcribed. Insights, information, and quotes during participant observation were recorded in research diaries. Narrative analysis was used to thematically organize and interpret fieldwork data. Our approach to field research focused on how workers discussed their jobs, skills, roles, experiences, places, and interactions. An ethnographic approach enabled insights from interviews to be stress-tested on the water, refining in situ explanations. While the research opened several lines of analysis, here we focus on the skilled, interactive work performed by those actors directly responsible for maneuvering ships on the water.

Of the thirty-seven port-based workers and operations managers we interviewed and conducted participant observation alongside, just six were women (16.2 percent). Our positionality inevitably influenced engagement with port workers. As middle-aged white men from the region, we were afforded opportunities that may not have been forthcoming for others. Although we did not challenge gender norms, access to maritime workspaces enabled insights into the organization of port-based operations. We made conscious efforts to ensure workers led field encounters and directed our participation on tasks. Participant observation was a learning process and opportunity to hear how work on the water at a busy, mixed-commodity seaport ensured ships’ safe, timely passage. Rapport developed through shared experiences and working-class backgrounds. As trust grew, we responded to questions about our own lives, sharing personal information and insights. Aspects of the analysis were shared with five participants prominent in the article who offered feedback on quotes and interpretations.

The Port at Work: Choreographed Coordination

Through observing how workers maneuvered ships through the port, we gained insights into a labor process that required careful planning, relational thinking, technical aptitude, and synchronizing of tasks among workers employed by different service providers. We conceptualize the labor process encompassing planning, design, and execution of seaport shipping movements as the choreographed coordination work underpinning spatial movement (Marks and Scholarios 2008; Chandler 2012). The concept of choreography, with its origins in the creative realms of dance and theater, is concerned with the way “movements relate to the space in which they take place and its physical [and social] characteristics” (Chandler 2012, 873). Choreography is also a useful lens to view how specialist workforces maneuver ships safely and reliably through a port.

Crucially, it is not a ship’s captain (working on behalf of big shipping capital) that choreographs a vessel to and from berth. It is neither a distant logistics manager crunching algorithms nor a port controller acting singularly from the control tower. Indeed, the port workers interviewed did not view themselves as logistics labor, identifying more as maritime workers with requisite high-level expertise about their port (as a distinctive place). While a harbor master has ultimate management responsibility for a port, and arriving ships are entangled in global shipping’s coercive labor regimes, control over the actual passage of vessels to and from berth remains in the hands of a locally based marine pilot. Under Australian maritime law, vessels thirty meters and above cannot enter a seaport unless under conduct from a marine pilot. In NSW, marine pilots are employed by the Port Authority which, despite privatization of the port asset, remains a publicly owned utility. Some twelve full-time pilots are employed at PK, managed by a harbor master, and supported by a twenty-five–strong team of pilot boat captains, deckhands, administrative, and VTS staff (assisting with communication and coordination work).

At PK, pilots and pilot-boat crews worked in twelve-hour shifts on a seven-on/seven-off rostering pattern. Communication included prearrival updates on port matters, such as congestion, delays, and weather, while coordination involved consulting with shipping agents and ship captains via processing notice of arrival/departure forms (which asked questions and collected information on the ship’s condition, crew on-board, technical features and defects, cargo-type, and berth requirements). VTS staff “collate the information, coordinate with the PA [pilots], ships and terminals to establish weekly shipping schedules” (Les, VTS, April 2022).

Pilots then assume the task of overseeing each ship’s passage through PK. In coordinating daily shipping operations, marine pilots were akin to orchestra conductors or dance choreographers—with the twist that, in physically boarding ships to be placed under their conduct, they are also on the stage where movements take place (rather than choreographing or orchestrating from a distance, as if in the wings or pit). Viewed in relation to debates regarding labor control and agency, a discrete cadre of port workers exercises power over spatial movements through such acts of choreography.

There is no textbook, nor top-down, defined strategy to bring 100,000 ton vessels into berth amid volatile winds, currents, and swell. For every ship, a marine pilot must design an individualized passage plan, hand drawn and linked to the ship type, cargo transported, assigned berth, forecasted weather, and marine conditions. Pilots combined these data to produce a technical passage plan, including headings, speeds vis-á-vis spatial position during the journey, identification of hazards and risks, execution of maneuvers, positioning of tugs, and the configuration of rope lines.

Ahead of each movement, passage plans were shared with VTS, the ship’s captain (via the agent), tugboat operators, and liners. Exchange of this technical information ensured collective awareness of individual roles in the overarching choreographed operation. Gyles, an early career, unrestricted pilot (i.e., fully qualified), explained their role, and this planning task:

My role is to conduct and coordinate shipping operations through this place. I plan for a series of maneuvers that give us the best possible chance of getting a ship into port, and back out to sea, safely and quickly. . . . There are lots of things to consider, when you do this job. You are operating in such a dynamic environment. That’s why, with our pilotage plans, we’re very clear with information on where tugs will be positioned at key moments, where we want the ship in relation to the channel entrance and other markers; what speeds we want to do at various stages. (May 2022)

While considered a routine job, substantial labor was involved in choreographing a ship’s safe passage through port before docking: scheduling, monitoring, planning, piloting, maneuvering, towing, and adapting to unforeseen circumstances. Choreographed coordination was codified in the passage plan, but this was not implemented in a fixed or static manner. As conditions required, tug and lines crews organized aspects of their work independently and preemptively of pilot direction. Tugs for example proactively reengaged ships when they deviated off course before quickly returning to the overall workflow.

On-water workers thus followed tailored passage plans, but responded to unfolding conditions, lateral oceanic forces, obstacles, and hazards (Sibilia 2019; Campling and Colás 2021). As pilot Gyles emphasized,

Remember we are open to contingencies and necessary changes. Conditions shift around quickly on the ocean. We make judgments and respond as a team . . . Otherwise, things go bad quick. To be honest, things rarely go exactly to the plan. We usually have some interruption to deal with, or something pops-up we’ve got to work-around. The breakwaters provide great structure for fish, so recreational fishers love getting in our way [laughs]. The wind rarely stops blowing here and we are seeing a lot of growth at this port. It’s part of what makes working in maritime exciting. (May 2022)

In a busy seaport handling the passage of diverse ships and cargoes, workers confronted many moving parts. Tasks were approached with a sense of coordinated direction along the ocean’s fluid lateral plane. Tim, a tug master, explained:

Each job involves following a series of steps and moves in the passage plan, a coordinated direction . . . We sync our movement with the pilot and the ship. Like a conga line. If a ship is coming into port, we meet it a mile or so from the entrance. Pilots on the bridge have conduct over each passage but work with us, the ship’s crew, liners, and VTS. It’s a team. We have the information in the passage plan. We follow it and conduct maneuvers according to the plan. We know our roles. The desired heading, our position to the ship, the islands, harbor entrance. We have speeds and rates of turn linked to various markers—Flinders Island, eastern breakwater, channel entrance, outer harbor marker, inner harbor maker. But there’s usually subtle changes, on the move. We may get pushed by winds and big swells common at PK. So, we make adjustments to maneuvers . . . We are constantly communicating with each other on the water. Throwing lines up or releasing them to get into another position to execute each turn. (June 2022)

While pilots choreographed the overarching passage of ships, port workers did not labor in isolation, nor stick rigidly to predeparture plans. Rather, out on the water choreographic coordination work was interactive and collaborative. Workers showed a capacity to organize aspects of their own work while linking it to the choreography of a ship’s overall spatial movement. Obstacles and disruptions were dealt with by intervening and restoring the overarching workflow.

A hierarchy did preside over the choreographed coordination of shipping movements—a form of power relations between worker roles. As the conductor, Marine pilots sat atop a chain of command. Nonetheless, choreographed shipping movements were iterative and reflexive (Chandler 2012). While led by marine pilots, a ship’s passage demanded regular input by a collective team of workers on the water who played active roles (both subtle and obvious) in the execution of movements in time space. The success of choreographed coordination work in a port setting was attributable to a workforce that was interactive, incorporating what Hampson and Junor (2010) refer to as creative solution-sharing. Other port workers bore the responsibility to actively question instructions and planned movements when they had concerns over safety or observed anything out of order. Jason, a tug master of twenty-five years, elaborated:

There’s a chain of command, which there needs to be so the performance of things goes to plan. The pilot coordinates and conducts the show. But we’re trained to speak up, actively question when something is out of order, or you see a potential problem. Maybe the pilot hasn’t noticed something up on the ships’ bridge. There could be a step in the passage plan we don’t feel safe with. The pilot might have instructed us to get in a position we are not comfortable with because of conditions, or they ask us to execute a maneuver from the wrong position in relation to a particular vessel. It could be heavier and sitting lower than anticipated. So, we question aspects of the operation: “Captain, do you think we could push further down the starboard aft here? That move will be a little easier on our tug, our equipment.” They usually say, “Yeah sure. Good thinking. Go ahead.” If we feel a movement is unsafe, we can refuse to follow an instruction. It’s no dictatorship on the water. We work together because there’s so much at stake. (July 2022)

At PK, chains of command on the water did not function as one-way information exchanges with orders from pilots followed without question. Nor were the services provided by different businesses purely transactional in the sense of one-time exchanges between separate parties. Rather, collaboration, information sharing, trust, and questioning were central to choreographic coordination. Amid choreographed labor at the seaport were instances when workers acted decisively in response to unexpected events or matters the pilot did not notice. Such off-script and impromptu work has always been part of choreography within artistic performance (Chandler 2012). Choreography “in its sheer premise instructs, arranges, and interprets life. It also goes one step further in its insistence on reflexivity” (Beasley 2008, 100). In our context, choreography as reflexivity helped to avert the escalation of risk. On-water work was a technical and social process occurring in and through dynamic maritime space.

Safety-critical Work and Situation Awareness

An important and recurring element in coordinating port operations was a binding relationship with place, including a heightened cognizance among workers of the dynamic environment in which they labored: a situational awareness required of the workforce (Sarter and Woods 2011). Situational awareness was such a conscious element of the on-water port labor process that maximizing situational awareness was the advertised theme of the 2023 Australasian Marine Pilots Institute annual conference. Seaports were referred to as dangerous, unpredictable, dynamic, and safety-critical places. Although supported by monitoring technologies and the guiding oversight of the harbor master, workers at the actual workplace of shipping movements must respond to ever-present risks in undertaking real-time tasks. For port workers, situational awareness involved working with the lateral forces of the ocean (cf. Campling and Colás 2021), “applying your training and using your experience handling ship movements” (Jason, tug master, June 2022), “utilizing real-time information to monitor your operating environment” (Rob, pilot, June 2022), “taking notice of things around so you undertake maneuvers safely” (Tim, tug master, August 2022), and “knowing your role so you contribute to the team’s operation” (Jo, pilot, May 2022). Port workers interpreted unfolding circumstances, monitored changes or unexpected events, and guided ships through an intimate awareness of the marine environment, prevailing conditions, team competencies, supportive technology and equipment, congestion in the port, and the ship’s own performance capabilities. Paul, a tugboat deckhand, explained:

Tens to hundreds of millions [of dollars] are on the line every time we go out on the water. There’s our tugs, the crew, and equipment. There’s the port and its assets. And there’s the 100,000-ton ship with a dozen crew loaded with A$30–40 million [US$21–28 million] worth of cargo. That is all meeting inside the port where conditions are unpredictable. One bad decision, we’ll run the ship into a breakwater and tear open its hull. If you misjudge a braking maneuver, we’ll hit the wharf and damage property or kill someone . . . We have tasks to execute but we’re also contributing to an overall operation. We need a strong awareness of the port and what is going on around you because things are so dynamic. You really have to understand your working environment. Notice anything amiss, so you can adjust and take the best action. You’re constantly asking yourself: what happens if we don’t execute this turn quickly enough? How do we get out of this situation if our winch fails for the ropes? You develop an awareness of the port environment because things change unexpectedly. How you identify an issue and respond means the difference between a major accident or a job well done. (May 2022)

Like others laboring on the inside of logistical arrangements, port workers operated from a commercial environment characterized by complex technologies, expensive infrastructures, efficiency goals, and a need to maintain service quality (Bonacich and Wilson 2008; Coe 2021). Yet at the seaport, high-risk work handling shipping movements was viewed as safety-critical first and time-critical second (cf. Li and Pilz 2023). Margins for error were slim, and the consequences of mistakes substantial.

While situational awareness was necessary to conduct shipping movements safely and reliably, the concept was not framed as solely individual, but a joint responsibility in fitting with the team-orientation of port operations. During a standard passage on a Norwegian car carrier, a marine pilot was aided by the situational awareness of a lines crew who observed a small recreational vessel heading toward the port channel and getting dangerously close to the incoming ship. The lines team quickly comprehended the unfolding situation, changing direction to intercept the vessel and avert a potential incident. We discussed the situation with Adam, the lead lines crew member:

That car carrier is ten stories high and 270 [meters] long. They can’t always see small vessels from the bridge, especially in the afternoon when incoming ships look into the sun. Recreational boaters should use some common sense and stay clear of big ships. But you’d be surprised how often they don’t realize where they are or what issue they’re causing. (June 2022)

Situational awareness was a distinguishing feature of the maritime operations overseen by port workers. On numerous other occasions we observed on-water workers identify hazards or risks and share information: recreational boaters fishing in areas near the main channel; floating debris; the lateral effects of currents, swells, and shifting winds. Aside from identifying hazards, workers collectively solved problems to maintain safety and proactively avoid major disruptions. Port workers at the actual site of disruption were responsible for achieving reliable shipping movements, not line managers or the distant bosses of shipping capital. In so doing, the on-water workforce exercised control over risk mitigation in real time.

Port Workers and Multidimensional Skills

In this final empirical section, we analyze the diverse skills embodied, combined, and applied by port workers enacting control over the maneuvering of ships in a dynamic, safety-critical domain. With the rise of e-commerce and concomitant global distribution networks, logistics workers have faced efforts from employers to control and cheapen access to skills, reduce worker autonomy, drive intralabor competition, and improve profit margins. Nevertheless, making things physically circulate in time-space still requires skilled labor power—a source of struggle for worker recognition in a cutthroat labor market (De Lara, Reese, and Struna 2016; Aspers and Sandberg 2020). Moreover, skills on the water at the seaport accrue through experience and collaboration, cementing expert status and recognized authority in maritime space. Port workers were unquestionably knowledgeable on maritime and environmental conditions within the port. They learned to read tides, swell, wind, and the effects of local topography, bathymetry, and approaching frontal weather systems on the movement of ships to and from berths. Through their everyday work and insistence on a safety-first approach, their working space (the port) had become a bulwark against the low-road maritime labor regime that arrives and departs at sea (cf. Campling and Colás 2021).

At PK, workers discussed and took pride in their diverse skills, formal training, technical roles, and maritime experience: what they called sea time. Formal institutionalized training and learning was obtained from the Australian Maritime College or the national vocational training system (Technical and Further Education). After receiving advanced diplomas (in maritime science, maritime operations) or bachelor's degrees (e.g., maritime engineering), port workers often began careers at a junior or cadet level. From here they undertook years of additional on-the-job training, practical testing, and mentoring to achieve high standards of proficiency required of roles in maritime ports. Pilotage was, for Rob, “a mix of formal training and technical skills around shipping, mixed with skills from experience interacting with the ship’s crew and our on-water team” (June 2022). Technical, codified skills in shipping and maritime services involved certified qualifications accredited by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority. Such recognized training taught foundational knowledge and skills in maritime shipping and services; granting authority; and, in turn, access to power in the workplace (cf. Arendt 1961; Allen 2003). But college-based training “didn’t teach you all of the skills you need for doing your job at a port to a high standard, especially in working as part of a culturally diverse team” (Chris, tug master, May 2022). Port workers emphasized how skills accrued with experience. Workers honed formal skills on the water while building competencies around local environmental knowledge, teamwork, leadership, and cross-cultural and interpersonal communication.

As an embodied aspect of labor power, skills were socially constructed, place-based, and multidimensional (Collins 2003). Across the three critical areas of on-water port operations (pilotage, towage, and line operations), we observed the role of so-called soft and tacit skills in communication, managing emotions, collective problem-solving, and cooperating within an interactive team (cf. Sennett 2012). As Freddy, a veteran tugboat master, explained,

It’s a team effort out here on the water so you need to lower your ego. Jobs rarely go exactly to plan. I’ve learned over twenty years that good teamwork gets you through a lot of dicey situations. It relies on having trust in the people you’re working with. Maintaining good relationships. You’ve got to have everyone on the same page, cooperating on a maneuver, or you’ll get problems. If you can’t speak up to a superior because you don’t want to upset them, you’ll get problems. If you need help but don’t want to ask for it, you’ll get problems. Sure, there’s lots to learn at maritime college but there’s also lots you can’t learn in maritime college. That comes from doing your job day-after-day and working with experienced people. A big challenge running a port is having the water team operate together, despite different backgrounds and employers . . . Sure, we disagree from time to time. But we respect each other deeply and manage our work relationships carefully. (September 2022)

Those with the most extensive formal qualifications and credentials were marine pilots, followed by tug masters, and marine engineers. Yet, deckhands and line crews also possessed diverse formal and experience-based skills. A conversation with a lines crew during an operation demonstrated the multidimensional skills needed for this crucial role:

Adam: We’re moving between a huge car ship, two tugs and berth 106, making sure we stay clear of all that danger. You have got to know exactly where you are. These rope lines are heavy and dangerous. We receive ropes tossed down by ship’s deckhands above us. We’ll continually communicate with them, the tugs and the pilot. Instructions flying everywhere. We process the ropes in a precise order and tie-off at the bollards. If you cross lines or get out of order, you have a big problem. You’ll have a right old time trying to untangle a ship’s [rope] lines. Worse, you could easily kill yourself or someone else out here.

Andrew: Your crew use mostly hand signals?

AK: Well, they can’t hear us down here. We communicate with the ship crew as they transfer ropes from the bow, stern, and midship. The gestures and sign language help coordinate the order. You learn to explain what you need using those signals. Every now and then we’ll need the pilot to radio communicate to the crew via the bridge. We can do that, but it slows down the process. Mostly, pilots give general instructions for how many lines they want tied, and we organize the ropes for the wharf with the deckies. Lines work is all about securing a ship to the port’s infrastructure. We don’t just deliver ropes to the wharf. There’s technical and safety components to every aspect. We’re out here in all conditions, 365 days a year. You need to handle pressure, communicate well, work with others, and do it all quickly. Above all, you need a safety-first mentality. (July 2022)

Through in situ participant observation, we came to understand that making ships physically circulate through a seaport required a multiskilled workforce. Workers themselves clearly understood the collective, skill-based aspects of running the port, attuned to material, biophysical, and infrastructural conditions. As Gyles elaborated,

Each port exists in a unique different operating environment. Different kettle of fish. As a pilot, if you’re doing 90 percent container ships, the repetition builds your skills and those of the on-water team. At ports like this, there’s a mix of vessels, very few container ships. That’s overlaid on the physical environment. We get fifty inches of rain a year, have many days where constant wind speeds exceed forty knots, and cop raw ocean swells . . . We’ve become very good working around the environment of this place. We do it together every day. Pilots go through an extensive in-port training regime. It doesn’t matter if you have twenty years’ experience at another port. It still takes three years of in-port training to become a fully licensed, unlimited pilot at a new place. When you come to PK from another port you say, “What? That’s a bloody long time.” But it makes good sense. You’re coming into a different environment. Once you get on board at PK, in twenty-odd minutes, you’re entering between five near-shore islands and conducting a maneuver for a ninety thousand ton ship, turning ninety degrees. You could have a three-meter swell, twenty-five knot winds and lashing rain. You’re coordinating with VTS, ship crew, tugs, liners. You’ve got the idiosyncrasies of each ship and different capabilities of foreign crews. Things get intense. (June 2022)

Perhaps the clearest illustration of port workers’ multidimensional skills occurred during interactions with crews aboard visiting ships. With Australia no longer having a domestic shipping fleet, all vessels passaging through PK were foreign-flagged and crewed by culturally diverse, international workforces. English was often a second or third language.

On the water, port workers displayed impressive skills in cross-cultural understanding, relationship-building and communication, as Jo articulated:

[Pilots] suggest to captains where their crew should be stationed but don’t take direct control of the helm. We’re the medium between the ship’s crew and our home port. We need confidence in the crews and they need confidence in our ability to navigate and maneuver their ship through our port. That means repeatedly asking yourself: Does the crew acknowledge my direction? Are they responding quickly? Do they understand what I’m requesting? Do they appear calm and confident or jumpy and anxious? Do they seem to trust what I’m directing them to do? (December 2022)

Given PK’s close offshore anchor points, short channel, and sharp turns, establishing trust quickly and communicating with ship’s crew effectively was determined in minutes, not hours. Rob discussed the significance of cross-cultural communication:

One thing I pass on to younger pilots and masters I mentor is do not overlook the cultural and language aspects of the job. We transfer commands and information through the radio, including directly from the bridge. Now, I always speak clearly and directly. Always with respect as I want to build rapport . . . Ask how everyone is going once you’re on board. Give your instructions and monitor the response. You might have to quickly intervene to ensure the situation is handled appropriately. There’s no room for misinterpreting. . . . In our job, we learn procedures, technical capabilities of ships, regulations, and maneuvering techniques. All that has to be combined with the ability to manage situations with people who are tired, emotional, and missing home . . . Because we’ve traveled a lot, too, I tell other pilots, if you’ve been to the country where the crew are from, use that to start a friendly conversation. You won’t have met these people before and you want to ensure they will raise an issue if they notice anything amiss. They need to feel confident in speaking up, that they will be heard. (July 2022)

On one job, workers unexpectedly encountered defects with a ship’s steering system while the winch on a tug malfunctioned at an ill-timed moment. The pilot, who wished to remain anonymous, explained how they handled the situation:

Any master of shipping understands how to apply forces to get a ship to respond as you want. But I was having to communicate and reassure the crew the whole time. They started to freak out as we approached the channel. The wind was blowing and the steering on that ship was very labored. They [crew] realized, “oh shit, that’s a sharp turn.” You heard [on radio] the captain say, “big turn here, pilot. We make that OK?”

Andrew: You also had a winch problem on the lead tug.

Pilot: The winch cut-out. Our training and experience kicked in though. We get this sort of thing. I just said to myself “OK, defective [bow] thruster. We’ll just work the tugs a bit harder, reposition them. Apply more force on the starboard aft a little sooner to change the ship’s trajectory quicker.” I asked the helmsmen to increase speed a few knots and quicken the turn. Then, I spoke to the crew, who were Romanian. Spoke little English. They were quite uneasy, so I said: “Everything is under control. This is normal for PK. We’re going well.” I kept words to a minimum and spoke slowly. I wanted no doubt in that situation because we had it under control. I kept repeating “That’s right, we’ve got this, captain. Nice and steady. We’ve got this.” I was trying to instill confidence. . . . Pilots are crosses between interpreters, diplomats, and dictators [laughs]. Interpret the situation. Request, diplomatically, something be done. And if necessary, demand it be so. (July 2022)

A diversity of skills embodied by port workers helped to ensure appropriate procedures and decisions were made despite a constantly changing physical and sociocultural environment. At the interface of land and sea, port workers consolidated their expertise and authority via collaboration, situational awareness, and multidimensional skills. Ultimately, inside the spatial boundaries of seaports, a collective on-water workforce controls how safe and reliable circulation is achieved.

Conclusions

Economic geographers examining the networked global economy have sought to recenter labor, critiquing the tendency toward forms of analysis that focus on firms “as the key agents and actors in global production systems” (Baglioni et al 2022, 1). The goal is to reorient labor at the “core of networked scalar systems of economic integration and production” (Baglioni et al. 2022, 1). We have advanced that agenda by drawing to the surface two key insights: how place makes a difference to the actual work of global circulation; and how that work, entailing coordination, skill, and complex mutual actions, enrolls transverse modes of power and labor agency.

In so doing, we have sought to diversify research on labor in economic geography. The primary focus has been, up until now, the labor–capital relation—whether forms of managerial control or modes of worker resistance. While conflict and antagonism remain fundamental, labor’s ontology cannot solely be reduced to a relation with capital as feminist labor geographers have stressed (Dutta 2020; Strauss 2020). Nor can meaningful worker agency be solely about strike action and unionized bargaining. Agency is expressed through transformative actions (Coe and Jordhus-Lier 2023), but capacities to exercise power also arise transversally—within and across labor itself, from everyday collaboration, problem-solving together across firms, or occupational roles—and from relations between labor and idiosyncratic places. Worker agency can thus be theorized in a complementary way: from prosaic actions undertaken in collaboration among different groups who labor with each other in the place-based contexts of work.

Such sensitivity to intralabor relations is especially valuable to reveal aspects of worker agency as they unfurl geographically: in challenging material places, for example, where workers are charged with the responsibility for continuity of capitalist circulation, and where worker collaboration, trust, and skill, accrue rather than diminish over time. While capital might aspire to reconstruct the world within its vision of ever-smooth circulation, it cannot escape the material exigencies of geography (Watts 2019). Exactly what conditions give rise to worker’s transverse modes of power, and the implications of such power relations for the ongoing conceptualization of labor in economic geography, remains an open empirical question extending beyond our initial analysis. Comparisons are likely in other places and industries at the core of circulation projects (airports, freight hubs), for risk management of critical infrastructure and assets (hospitals, finance and banking), and continuity in essential services (metropolitan rail networks, emergency services). Toward comparative research on such workers and places, we offer choreographed coordination, situational awareness, and multidimensional skills as conceptual tools to help unlock a more diverse picture of agency from within the labor process itself, at the level of workers, in key places.⁵

The example of port workers illustrates how this is so. We demonstrated how port workers collaborated, labored collectively, and applied diverse skills in challenging places. In so doing, workers generated capacities for transverse agency via the daily social experience of handling shipping movements. Through everyday labors, workers shaped ports as economic geographic spaces. Within the spatial limits of ports at least, safety comes before expediency—a bulwark against global shipping’s low-road labor regimes. Ports are demanding places critical to systems of physical circulation, requiring on-the-water maritime expertise among workers who do not view themselves as subordinate to the logistics industry nor see their ports as mere hubs in logistical arrangements. While global shippers and logistics firms exploit workforces and seek to switch oceanic routes to cut costs, ships must still visit ports to load and discharge cargo—navigating challenging places that port workers view as their domain. The power of big logistics firms at ports is neither singular nor unidirectional. Through collaboration and skills attuned to local conditions, port-based workers are key agents in global circulation.

Among the implications for conceptualizing labor in economic geography are the need to look more closely at how workers interact with each other, and with place, inside and across firms and stages of value chains. While antagonism and exploitation are baked into the labor–capital relationship, capitalist circulation depends on considerable work and skill, including invisible forms of transverse power among workers. This work, and the forms of agency conferred through such work, cannot be taken for granted, especially within an increasingly disruptive world. In a context of multiple and unfolding global crises (Carr 2023; Leyshon 2023), who exactly does the work of responding to inherent risk, keeping things in motion? The perspective from ports, on the water, suggests that such work is neither incidental nor fungible.

Finally, for labor geographers concerned with agency, our argument suggests that socialization and the grounds for solidarity do not solely arise in conflict but can emerge in prosaic, extraconflictual relations linked to place, even deep within the segmented, surveilled, globalized economy (cf. Gough 2002). Spiteful political struggles continue over work and employment conditions (De Lara, Reese, and Struna 2016), especially in logistics, shipping, and port services (Aspers and Sandberg 2020). In such contexts, transverse relations between workers and between workers and place warrant further economic geographic analysis. Intralabor relations are not uniformly positive and may prove to be conflictual and discriminatory in themselves—an impediment to solidarity (Warren 2019). Nevertheless, transverse relations can diversify labor’s strategic role, particularly as multidimensional crises and disruption risks accelerate. In a disruption-prone global economy, corporate and government actors whose profitability and viability depend upon circulation and continuity will face profound challenges without the workers who adapt, manage, respond, and keep things going. Herein lies an underacknowledged source of agency for workers embedded in the very work of doing what is necessary to ensure circulation.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to our colleagues Chantel Carr, Lucy Taksa, and Mallee Smith, the four anonymous referees, and editor Jim Murphy for their constructive feedback on versions of this article. Thanks also to the maritime workers who gave their time to participate and support the research. Funding was provided by Australian Research Council Grants DP200100633 and DE180100492.

Notes

1 Following Jonas (1996, 325), economic geographers theorize labor control as the “historically contingent and territorially embedded set of mechanisms which coordinate the time-space reciprocities between production, work, consumption and labor reproduction.” Workers may resist control through political actions spanning formal, union-led campaigns to more subtle acts of reducing labor effort in work spaces (Carmichael and Herod 2012; Joyce 2020).

2 We acknowledge feminist critiques around what constitutes labor and worker-centered analyses of the capitalist space economy (McDowell 2015; Strauss 2020). In this article, our concern is with workers’ lived experiences of waged labor (Perrons 1986), though we are cognizant of the domestic, social, and community dimensions that inform those experiences outside the hours and places of waged work.

3 Economic geographers have also long studied ports (see Seeman 1935; Miller 1937). Intriguingly, our case study, Port Kembla, was the focus of Britton’s (1962) analysis in this journal sixty years earlier.

4 Clarification is warranted between labor process analysis and its workplace-focused tradition, and labor market studies that focus on the dynamics of capitalist restructuring. The concept of labor regimes has reemerged to help explore the multiscalar power dynamics inherent to the capital–labor relationship, including the brokering role of the state and matters of social reproduction that regulate the supply of skilled labor power (Mezzadri 2021; Baglioni et al. 2022). The concept of labor regimes is viewed as a middle ground but maintains a focus on antagonism and conflict. Labor regime analysis seeks to reject privileging any single site within a global production system. Hence, Baglioni et al. (2022) define labor regimes as a societal framework whereby labor (broadly defined) is central to how we understand and approach the capitalist space economy. Because labor regimes research is still mostly about labor–capital conflict, our assessment of the limits to labor geography analyses of agency equally applies.

5 Comparative research is also needed on the flipside of worker-centered transverse modes of power and the management of risk, for example, where systems fail or collapse (in finance and banking, and emergency and essential services). These may be a failure of management investing in, and entrusting, workforces to collaborate in mitigating risk. Our framework would be equally relevant in such circumstances.