The Politics of Ports: Privatization and the World's Ports

Abstract

The recent controversy over a foreign-owned company running a US port brought attention to the creeping privatization of work in ports worldwide. Since the 1980s, there has been a head-long rush to privatize ports. The pace can be best described as rapid and chaotic. For some economists privatization is seen as a method to increase efficiency. But the process has substantial critics. For many privatization is perceived as problematic. There is evidence that the process does not indeed lead to savings and greater efficiency. Instead, the process has been haphazard and far from uniform in its application. Even where there is an entrenched presence, savings from privatization have yet to be realized. Others have made the point that the process cannot be transferred to ports in the developing world. That is, the multiplicity of ports and transportation problems in the interior make privatization more like wishful thinking than a policy that can work.

Risk‐benefit perceptions, preferences for solutions, and gaining trust: Listening to New Jersey's Atlantic Ocean port communities

“…Tomer and Kane (2015) describe the mismatch between costs and benefits: port benefits are widespread, whereas the costs of maintaining the roads, rail, and other infrastructure fall on local area, states, and port authorities. National security, national pride, and governance are also involved in port management, which further complicates the geographical distribution of costs and benefits (Davis, 2007).…”

Managerial technologies and power relations: a study of theAustralian waterfront

“…The recent transformation of the port labour process has consequences for port workers although the impact in terms of the organisation and operation of the labour process has not yet been addressed (see Turnbull, ; Davis, ; Turnbull and Wass, ; Bonacich and Wilson, ; Hall, ). One impact may be in relation to strategic jobs, that is, the strategic positioning of frontline jobs in the ongoing balancing of power relations at the waterfront.…”

Port reform, South Asian migrant workers and spaces of vulnerability in Port Klang, Malaysia

“…Thus, some accounts that discuss the potential benefits of changing governance structures also temper over‐optimism with discussions of the potential negative impacts as a consequence of labour rationalisation and reduced working conditions (Turnbull, 2006; Hill, 2008). Others, such as Davis (2007), argued that the embrace of port privatisation is predominantly concerned with reducing the power of trade unions and is thus inherently politically rather than economically motivated. To Peter Turnbull, who has documented workers struggles on the docks of Europe, it is the large private sector interests of international shipping lines, shippers, freight forwarding and distribution companies that are all actively involved in trying to reconfigure conditions under which ports operate and in doing so alter the dynamics of global capital accumulation (Turnbull, 2000: 307).…”