![]() It utilizes all manner of tools, gear, light and heavy machinery. Longshoring is considered unskilled work but it is made up of myriad skills. I didn't want to look stupid, but I was stumped. The foreman asked me to go get the "henway." I searched through the tools and implements laid out on the dock apron. We belly wrapped the boards together with plastic straps and secured them with bands. On one of my first jobs my partners and I were tasked with bundling lumber and otherwise preparing it to be loaded onto a cargo vessel. We were, in other words, a drop in the ocean. The workforce at that time hovered around a thousand. I and 12 other women were the first to be registered in the Port of Seattle. Now, affirmative action laws dictated that some of their new hires be women. The longshore industry in Seattle had never hired women before. Because of this experience I was in good position when the International Longshore and Warehouse Union/Pacific Maritime Association (ILWU/PMA) began hiring longshore workers in May 1980, the year after my graduation. I had worked on the waterfront as a casual ship's clerk during the summers while I was in college, a paperwork job that involved counting and sorting cargo. ![]() My career as a dockworker began when I graduated from the UW with one of the least marketable degrees offered, a BA in history. This is her account of her career on the docks and in the cabs of the 15-story-tall cranes, maneuvering 60-ton containers on and off huge cargo ships. Over the next two decades she advanced, through seniority, to become the first woman to operate a container crane at the Port of Seattle. In 1980, a year after graduating from the University of Washington, Kevin Catherine Castle was in the first group of women to join International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Seattle Local 19, loading and unloading ships on Seattle's Elliott Bay waterfront.
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