LONGSHORE work is shaped largely by the maritime industry's technology. That technology has three components: the cargoes being transported; the vessels used to transport cargo; and the gear necessary for moving cargo to and from its place of shipboard stow. Coordinating and integrating these components creates a range of challenging and changing operational circumstances for dockworkers. Longshoremen routinely work cargoes of differing size, weight, and packaging. Differences in ship design and deck configuration also complicate the work considerably. Each ship varies with respect to its design, capacity, and the state of its shipboard gear. To compound the diversity in circumstance encountered by longshoremen, loading sequences are dictated by the ship's subsequent ports of call. Adding to the complexity of longshore work is the wide variety of technology used on the docks.

Given this complicated configuration of technology, longshore work requires not only physical strength and stamina, but also initiative and ingenuity, diverse skills, and experience, an ability to innovate cooperatively. Indeed, because the pace and difficulty of longshoring is not just a function of technology, and because the work does not lend itself to continual supervision, efficiency on the docks depends upon the decentralization of initiative.

Focusing on five types of longshoring in two technological contexts, one can see how potential power is generated, and sometimes realized, on San Francisco's docks.