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第5号

[ 要旨 ]

　一八〇一年に創設されたブルックリン海軍造船所は、最盛期には約七万人もの労働者を抱える巨大施設であった。数々の歴史的艦船を建造し、港湾都市ニューヨークの繁栄を支えた同造船所は、そこに働く労働者や地域の人々の誇りであったが、第二次大戦後ニューヨークの港湾風景は次第に変化し、一九六六年造船所は閉鎖される。
　本論文では、造船所を巡る一連の変化が持つ歴史的意味を、そこに暮らし、労働する人々の生活世界を通して考察する。とりわけ、労働現場に焦点をあて、造船所で働く熟練工たちが保持していた秩序や価値観、男性主義的文化の存在を明らかにし、労働者間でつくられていた絆の持つ意味を論じる。また、家族やコミュニティと労働者たちとの関係についても考察を進め、造船所を中心に存在していた労働者の生活世界全体を明らかにする。
　造船労働の中心は高い技術を持つ熟練工であり、それらはほとんど白人男性で占められていた。巨大な艦船の建造という国家的事業に携わる白人男性熟練工は、自らの仕事に強い誇りと自信を抱いていた。しかし、新工法の登場による合理化の圧力は、彼らが維持してきた秩序を揺るがし始めた。白人男性で占められてきた熟練労働は次第に不要となり、労働力の流動化が進んだ結果、黒人などの非白人労働者の割合が増加、コミュニティ環境も大きく変化していた。もはや白人男性熟練工中心に築かれてきた生活世界は維持しえず、それは彼らをとりまく人種やジェンダーなどの社会関係の変化を示していた。また、この時期ニューヨークには公民権運動や反戦、フェミニズムなど様々な社会運動が現れるが、ブルックリン造船所の閉鎖はまさにそうした時代の予兆であった。

[ Abstract ]

The Brooklyn Navy Yard (BNY), which employed 70,000 workers at its peak during WWII, was the biggest navy yard in America. BNY closed in 1966 and previous studies have discussed its closing from a military or economic standpoint. This essay considers the historical meanings of the closing of BNY from the viewpoint of the BNY workers’ lives, and labor as a social history. Especially focusing on the job sites in BNY in detail, this paper will clearly show that BNY workers shared their own orders, values, and masculine culture there, which also worked as the basis of solidarity among BNY workers.
In BNY job sites, the skilled workers had the highest position of all workers because building war vessels, in particular aircraft, required very high skills. At first, BNY workers were requested to practice and learn many skills in the classroom and on job sites. They served as apprentices under the journeymen for some years and at every stage, they had to pass written and practical examinations to proceed to the next stage. In this way, they could progress to being journeymen with both higher positions and wages. Being a journeyman was not only a source of pride for every worker but also meant that they deserved for other workers and their families to treat them with honor and trust. The presence of BNY had brought life to working-class communities where skilled workers with pride and confidence, many of whom were white men, were at the center as breadwinners. In BNY and neighboring working-class communities, the orders of race and gender centered on the skilled workers.
However, after WWII deindustrialization started in New York. The rapid progress of automation forced the industrial structure in New York to change. As a result, on the waterfront the number of blue-collar workers decreased as manufacturing factories moved away from New York. Surging automation and new technology affected BNY seriously. Above all, the advent of the atomic era relegated BNY, which had depended on skilled workers, to the outmoded. The decline of BNY simultaneously meant that the order that had been maintained by skilled workers and their families in the communities around BNY was waning. On the job sites, the number of minority workers such as blacks and Puerto Ricans increased in the place of skilled workers. While white workers left the city, the population of minorities in Brooklyn increased rapidly.
In the end, the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, decided to close BNY because of the rationalization of the U.S. army, which also showed that the BNY workers’ lifestyle and labor could not be maintained any longer. In addition, the closing of BNY was a sign of the beginning of a new, confused era in the late 1960s New York with the rise of the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war movement.