The realism of The Wire Season 2

August 3, 2010 1:09 PM

I'm currently in the process of rewatching The Wire for the third time, and there is something that has been bugging me about season two for a long time (there are no real spoilers in this question, btw). The second season is thematically all about "the death of the American blue-collar worker", in this case the stevedores working at Baltimore harbor. But this doesn't ring true to me. I mean, yes, American industrial production is plummeting in favor of countries with cheaper labor (like China), but doesn't that mean that the US has to import more stuff? And clearly it is. And most of those imports comes in by boat. So why isn't the harbor be prospering?

The one explanation I could think of myself is that the actual reason why the dockworkers are suffering is that with increased automation of harbors, less workers are needed to unload each ship. This issue is raised within the show, but the main reason given is explicitly that fewer and fewer ships come in each year (this is a frequently repeated line of the main dockworker-character). And I don't see how that can be true.

Now, I realize that the glib answer is "Dude, it's a TV show, not real life". But this is a show that strives to be realistic more than perhaps any other show ever has. I can't imagine that David Simon and the writers are simply wrong about the state of Baltimore harbor and those who work there. It's much more likely that I'm wrong, and that's why I'm asking you fine fellows to enlighten me!

posted by gkhan to Media & Arts (30 answers total)

Well, if the stuff's coming in from China, it's probably more likely that it's getting sent to e.g. Long Beach or Los Angeles than to Baltimore. (I am definitely no shipping expert, but I've watched a lot of The Wire.)
posted by box at 1:12 PM on August 3, 2010 [2 favorites]

A completely unfounded wild-ass guess - products made in Asia are much more likely to be unloaded on the Pacific coast, and, in general, newer docks might have less entrenched and expensive workforces. I assume eastern seaboard unloading will be the most expensive in the US; Fedex and UPS can get products from California to New York very quickly now.

I also wonder if there are NAFTA-style provisions allowing them to be unloaded in Mexico and trucked up, again, providing a cheaper workforce of stevedores.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 1:14 PM on August 3, 2010

The Baltimore Harbor specifically is dying or dead. It was an important harbor in early America and has gotten less so ever since.

As noted above, most stuff coming by boat now comes from Asia and lands in Long Beach. And what does come to the east coast goes to Norfolk or other places.
posted by drjimmy11 at 1:16 PM on August 3, 2010 [2 favorites]

Wire is ultimately about a city's decline, and while it is easy to imagine the issues at play nationally I think the wirters are smart to limit their scope to what they know (Baltimore).
posted by 2bucksplus at 1:17 PM on August 3, 2010

Ugh. The Wire, the writers
posted by 2bucksplus at 1:17 PM on August 3, 2010

- west coast shipments
- they mention that Baltimore is another day past the NY docks - what is the incentive for ships to add another 2 days onto the trip (one day in, another day out)
- much more automation
- on the show, they were also having problems with the ship canal depth - it needed dredging. That could have been true in real life too.
posted by barnone at 1:18 PM on August 3, 2010 [3 favorites]

Within the mythology of the show, there's one moment in the show where Pulaski is yelling at his nephew, after he and his cousin take in some "freelance" work about how it's cheaper to unload in New York and Somewhere South of Baltimore, but people come here because there's less theft, that that's how he's keeping the port alive. Also there seems to some indication that the infrastructure in Baltimore isn't up to par, they keep talking about digging a deeper channel. But I hope real shipping people swing by and help more.
posted by edbles at 1:19 PM on August 3, 2010

I would guess a big part of the the problem for Baltimore is that most of the US import growth is coming from Asia and arrives in the US at LA or Long Beach, rather than on the East coast. Or maybe the ships are getting bigger, which explains why there are fewer while the volume imports continue to rise, and a giant cargo ship can be unloaded just as quickly (or not slower so it matters) in an increasingly automated port.

Fewer ships could just be a handwavy way of saying "less work to do".
posted by caek at 1:20 PM on August 3, 2010

No, it's about the death of labor because of politics. The docks weren't getting much work due to the ports shifting somewhere else, I think it was closer to the ocean or Mexico. Combine that with automation and the were really screwed.
posted by nomadicink at 1:23 PM on August 3, 2010

Johns Hopkins offers a sociological tour of Baltimore, including the docks. The explanation that we were given is that it's cheaper for ships to unload at Norfolk than to chug up the Patapsco to Baltimore. Trucking from Norfolk costs less than the time / fuel required to get to Baltimore. And Baltimore's markets for raw materials / outbound shipping have dried up as industry shrivels. No more McCormick, less Domino sugar, less heavy industry.
posted by charmcityblues at 1:24 PM on August 3, 2010 [2 favorites]

From June 2009, RECORD YEAR IN 2008 FOR PORT OF BALTIMORE (PDF)

General cargo handled through the public terminals broke a record for the second straight year by finishing at 8.9 million tons, a three percent increase from 2007. This marked the seventh consecutive record year of growth for general cargo tonnage. General cargo is defined as containers, autos, steel, forest products, and roll on/roll off cargo (farm and construction equipment).

posted by smackfu at 1:24 PM on August 3, 2010 [3 favorites]

For what it's worth, Wikipedia has a list of US ports ranked by tonnage. The busiest seem to be on the Gulf of Mexico.

I just read The Unmaking of the American Working Class by Reg Theriault, a West Coast longshoreman, who doesn't specifically address your question but does imply that automation and particularly containerization are the main factors in the reduction in employment in the industry.
posted by enn at 1:25 PM on August 3, 2010

More on containerization.
posted by neroli at 1:33 PM on August 3, 2010

This was discussed a little in Alan Beattie's "False Economy" -- the advent of standardized shipping containers allowed for huge automation advantages, and so even though US imports have dramatically increased in the last 40 years, the number of workers required to process those imports are orders of magnitude lower. Even if the number of stevedores required has gone up somewhat in the last 5 years, it's never going back to where it was. The union in the 2nd season of the Wire has failed to really grasp that.
posted by modernnomad at 1:33 PM on August 3, 2010

Offtopic a bit... charmcityblues, can you tell us more about the Hopkins tour of Baltimore? I'd love to go on it if it's open to the public.
posted by fancypants at 1:34 PM on August 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

I thought they said something about the city not incentivizing companies to use their harbor versus other in terms of fees levied, etc. I believe this is why Sobatka is trying to buy off the politicians, to provide these incentives.
posted by xammerboy at 1:36 PM on August 3, 2010

The stevedores used to be working class or middle class work. We are lead to believe this is comparable to being a fireman, or at least viewed in the community as a respectable, stable career. As the season progresses we learn that the stevedores were never as respectable as fireman and large portions of their wealth occurred through lost inventory.

For the stevedores, the stevedores at least, the automation already occurred. This reduced profit while simultaneously increasing the risk. Sure they could still bypass the carefully orchestrated (and monitored) hand-off between yard and truck, but at greatly increased odds of destroying the entire organization.

The increased reliance on drug trafficking was no accident. This is a product of last resort in the world of The Wire and was last leaders literally cannibalizing themselves. This way of life had died a long time ago and only the last heirs remained, completely ignorant and complicit in their own demise.
posted by geoff. at 1:42 PM on August 3, 2010 [4 favorites]

"Stevedore" is another word for "longshoreman" and the big change for the longshoremen was the development of containerized cargo. The reason everyone except the longshorement loved containers was that ships could be loaded and unloaded in a fifth the time, with a tenth the number of longshoremen (I don't know if those numbers are exact, but it's on that order).

The longshoremen tried to prevent the change with strikes, but that was futile. So since that transformation, it's been bad for "stevedores".
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:45 PM on August 3, 2010

Pulaski
Sobotka
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 2:09 PM on August 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

Adding to the discussion about the Baltimore infrastructure, remember that Sobotka was working hard (and spending lots of union money) to hire lobbyists to dredge and modernize the port.
posted by mmascolino at 2:34 PM on August 3, 2010

Wasn't there something about dredging, too? The dredging project kept getting postponed, which made the port less accessible to many of the container ships. That's what I always got out of it. Correct me if I'm wrong, though.
posted by two lights above the sea at 3:07 PM on August 3, 2010

Re shipping, the majority of shipping from Asia goes to the West Coast and then is shipped by truck and rail across the US. Tonnage isn't very useful for evaluating ports, because oil ports move massive amounts of tonnage with few workers. (This is why the busiest ports list is dominated by the Gulf ports, as well as Port Elizabeth which also has refining facilities). Looking at container ports, Baltimore is 12th nationwide, but handles many more smaller vessels rather than the bigger ones that Norfolk and New York can; therefore, less efficient. The major thrust to kill the employment at the docks was containerization. It's fully consistent with smackfu's link that improvements in containerization and port efficiency can move more goods with fewer men. I remember seeing a video on the almost entirely robotic facilities at Rotterdam, but I don't know if it was part of this season of The Wire, or real life.

I read an interview with David Simon where he mentioned that they were considering three locations for season 2; IIRC the two unchosen ones were a steel mill and a GM plant.

Something implicit but rarely stated in the season (Sobotka's excellent "we used to build shit in this country" speech aside) is that this kind of skilled blue collar work is drying up in all sectors. The dockworkers are generally hard working, loyal and smart workers. Or, Ziggy aside, at least two out of the three (yay The Wire for characters with dimensions). If the port was going through a slowdown, used to be a hardworking blue collar guy with no education could actually find some other way to put bread on their table.

And, of course, this ties back into the drug trade -- the other, better-paying jobs that the drug dealing youth we see could have just don't exist anymore. It's the streets or work at Foot Locker for minimum wage.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 3:43 PM on August 3, 2010

All the above, but one thought. The general size of the port is smaller than west coast. I don't know Baltimore but Boston has about 3 container cranes and maybe a 2000 foot wharf and no where to expand. The west coast container docks are just vast rows of huge cranes and fields of containers. The east coast ports would need to clear whole neighborhoods to be competitive.
posted by sammyo at 5:18 PM on August 3, 2010

The writer's of the Wire are less concerned with particular industries, as to the inability of relationships between institutions to create long-lasting solutions for the city's institutions. Internal politics (the stevedore's collusion with the internal drug trade) is necessitated by the city's politics (we need waterfront condos, white people love the water!) which is itself financed through the drug trade.

Part of the deeply pessimistic ethos of the Wire is that none of the interventions are possible given the total sum of the city's institutions, politics and interests of the major players: they always come together to protect the powerful and screw the poor, and middle class. This comes out with a heavier hand in the later seasons but is consistent with the rest of the show.
posted by stratastar at 6:11 PM on August 3, 2010

Yup. Pulaski is a bridge that I was google mapping in the other window. So that should be Sobotka was yelling at his nephew.
posted by edbles at 6:13 PM on August 3, 2010

As the season progresses we learn that the stevedores were never as respectable as fireman and large portions of their wealth occurred through lost inventory.

As someone who grew up in a town with a large port, around stevedores who were definitely called stevedores, the phenomenon of "came off the docks" is pretty familiar: the importers/exporters would make allowances (and be insured) for a certain amount of spoilage, breakage and other damage in transit, and a corresponding amount of stuff -- usually booze and tobacco -- would end up sold in pubs. It was regarded as a tacit perk of a dangerous, gruelling skilled job. Containers changed that, too.
posted by holgate at 6:14 PM on August 3, 2010

I think a lot of it has to do with the condition of the port (needs dredging, isn't modernized) as well as its location (Norfolk and New York are easier to get to). The modernization is key. I remember being told that at the port in Hong Kong, the automated cranes could load or unload one of the giant container ships in under an hour (and they do move quite fast), but the process is almost entirely automated, reducing the number of workers needed, which seemed to be something Sobotka was violently against. Even had they dredged the river, I imagine the refusal to adopt the modern technology would have had the same result (parts of the port being remade in condos, workers losing their jobs).
posted by Ghidorah at 7:30 PM on August 3, 2010

American industrial production is plummeting

This is actually untrue. In fact, pre-recession US exports, as a percentage of GDP, had never been higher. What has hurt employment in manufacturing is higher productivity, largely achieved through automation. Additionally, for unskilled laborers such as longshoremen, wages have been flat the last three decades, which has severely eroded the ability of even the remaining port jobs to support a lower-middle-class lifestyle. (I've been witness to this in a former GM town.)

Other factors affecting Baltimore, specifically, as a port are the advent of the post-Panamax container ships. These have deeper drafts, and by definition, are wider than the existing Panama canal (which is being rebuilt to have wider channels aka New Panamax). Only a few ports are capable of handling these, and the Gulf and Hampton Roads are both more convenient to the Canal than Baltimore. By the way, the Canal expansion is expected to be a boon to east coast ports, and Baltimore has pegged its future tp the post-panamax business -- thanks to a billion-dollar investment by the port and private money.

There are some difficulties. The Wire obviously intended this to be a stand-in for all of US manufacturing and labor in some ways, and how institutions have failed them broadly, just as the fictional Patapsco Terminal had been failed by the Baltimore institutions. But there are more complicated things at work. For instance, back in the mid-20th century, the longshoremen's work opportunities would have included many more warehouses and factories in the immediate port vicinity. Much of that work has vanished or moved to the suburbs. (This is what happened to the black middle class in this country, as well. This is, specifically, why there are so many "vacants" in Baltimore.) The community can't survive just on the port jobs anymore, and it was being swallowed and gentrified.

By the way, the dredging project Sobotka wanted was based on an abandoned proposal from the 1990s to further deepend the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal. That proposal is now part of the Baltimore upgrades.
posted by dhartung at 11:01 PM on August 3, 2010 [2 favorites]

N'thing containerization. I spent about a year of my life consulting with the biggest drug store chain in the US, designing system logic for a container loading optimization software. Approximately 85% of the things they sold in their stores outside the pharmacy came from China in containers, offloaded by cranes from either Long Beach or Oakland, onto trains or trucks, depending on where they were going. Most of them never touched by a human hand from when they were sealed in China to when they are opened at their destination.

I also wonder if there are NAFTA-style provisions allowing them to be unloaded in Mexico and trucked up, again, providing a cheaper workforce of stevedores.

Yep.
posted by allkindsoftime at 1:33 AM on August 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

If you are interested in this subject, you should check out this book: The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
posted by smackfu at 6:33 AM on August 4, 2010 [2 favorites]