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How Much Does Law Matter? Labor Law, Competition, and Waterfront Labor Relations in Rotterdam and U.S. Ports

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Robert A. Kagan
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Abstract

In an increasingly competitive world marketplace, can cross-national variations in law—in this case, in labor law—produce markedly different economic outcomes? In both The Netherlands and the United States, law has helped rationalize the hiring of port labor and provide dockworkers greater security. However, American longshoremen have captured a larger share of the productivity gains flowing from the mechanization of cargo handling than have Dutch dockworkers. Because of constraints imposed by American longshore unions, container terminals in Rotterdam are more efficient and less costly to users. These differences can in part be explained by American labor law, which encourages a more adversarial, self-seeking union posture than does the labor law structure in The Netherlands. Probably more important, however, are economic factors, which expose Dutch dockworkers (but not West Coast longshoremen) to competition from ports in other nations. Similarly, international competition, intensified by the technological revolution in transportation, seems likely to impel cross-national convergence in many spheres, leveling differences in law and in legally influenced outcomes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , 1990 , pp. 35 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study provided support for research on which this paper is based. Additional support has been provided by the Institute for Governmental Studies and the Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California, Berkeley, as well as the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California. Thanks are due Hendrik De Ru, Lloyd Ulman, Earl Westfall, Eric Nijhof, Harold Wilensky, Henry Farber, Joel Rogers, and Nelson Polsby for their helpful comments on earlier drafts, to Kurt DeBelder for translating Dutch sources, and to Anthony Brantenaar and Diana Watts for helping to arrange interviews in Rotterdam.

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