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PORTSIDE CULTURE

SHIPYARD UNIONISM: A NOVEL OF TRIUMPHS AND DEFEATS – A REVIEW OF
GOLIATH AT SUNSET BY JONATHAN BANDOW  
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Kurt Stand
December 10, 2025
Portside

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_ It is rare to read fiction rooted in workplace life, rare to read
fiction that explores the inner-life of a union in conflict within
itself and with management. Thus the value of Jonathan Brandow’s
Goliath at Sunset. _

Ship under construction at the General Dynamics Shipyard in Quincy,
MA, 1971, Photo credit: U.S. Navy photo from the USS Kalamazoo (AOR-6)
1973-1974 cruise book

 

_“Here’s what’s wrong in this yard. Two white welders get fired
and blackmailed into silence for their jobs. A third one, black, with
an unblemished record, is fired for the same supposed offense and the
company refuses to budge.”_

_“Ain’t right!” someone called._

_“But not one of the three welders should have lost a minute of pay,
much less their jobs. And why? Because you can’t breathe carbon
monoxide! They are all victims of this company’s core value:
Production over safety!”_

 

Goliath at Sunset
[[link removed]]By
Jonathan BrandowHard Ball Press; 330 pagesNovember 29, 2025Paperback:
 $22.00ISBN-13 : ‎ 979-8989802586 

 
Hard Ball Press
 

Set at a shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts where Brandow worked for 9
years, he uses his experiences as a welder and a union officer to give
GOLIATH an authenticity that is too often lacking in fictional
depictions of labor.  This is evident in his awareness of the
complexity of the characters in the novel, in the picture he presents
of union meetings, grievance handling, rank-and-file
organizing.                  

            Set in the late 70s -- early 80s. at the time
of the Iran hostage crisis and the racist violence that followed
attempts to desegregate Boston’s public school, Brandow places his
work in a wider context of events shaping the time without ever losing
his focus on the shipyard.  The novel centers on the life of Michael
Shea, a Vietnam vet whose personal experiences lead to awareness of
class injustice (fueled in part by his mother’s picket line assault
that results in her death), and, unusual in the community in which he
was raised, awareness of racial injustice and a rejection of the
racial hatreds that surround him. Shea’s status as a veteran at a
time when jobs were plentiful, enables him to find work as a welder. 
The hazards of shipyard work, the union’s unwillingness to fight
back, lead him to become an engaged unionist and eventually, a shop
steward.  This is shown against the backdrop of personal challenges
and difficulties that make this path anything but a linear march of
progress. 

            At the center of the novel is a conflict over
the role of shop stewards. Do they serve the union leadership, doling
out favors to the skilled, the “loyal,” those who are white; do
they defend workers by compromising their rights; or do they fight
management through unity, creativity, militancy, by organizing rank
and file participation – and reaching out for support outside the
workplace.  

            Behind those choices lies a difference as to
how to relate to a changing workforce.  A shipyard that in living
memory had been almost all white men now includes Black Americans,
West Indians, Cape Verdeans, Puerto Ricans, a small but growing number
of women, all of whom the old leadership fears and resents.  And many
of the younger white workers don’t have the commitment to the job or
union that older ones had.  Thus a weakened union, a union that has
become parochial, a union that still tries to represent the workforce
but does so through compromises with management that allows for small
victories at the expense of loss of rights.  The price of doing so is
at a cost that will come due.

            The battle over the quality of the work
stewards perform is merged with the battle to have enough stewards. 
That conflict is central to all that follows as Bandow makes clear
early on:

            _“[Shea] checked his contract … it
permitted one steward for each two hundred hardhats in a department. 
Despite that, the union by-laws capped the number at a single steward
[per department]. He couldn’t let that go.  How could it be
possible that the union – not the company – limited the number of
stewards, the front-line protections guys had on the job?  Shea
realized it really was a black and white issue. The only truly
affected department, the only one that qualified under the contract
for additional stewards, was welding—the only department with a
significant number of black votes.”_

            That sparks a union meeting where the
rank-and-file gets defeated by leadership afraid that opening doors
might loosen their own authority.  Subsequent battles – over racist
graffiti in bathrooms, the lay-off of a pregnant worker, speed-up,
safety & health concerns, company disciplinary policies, the conduct
of a strike – show the shifting sentiment of workers, how prejudiced
attitudes can be broken down and how they can resurface. In all of
this, the fights and arguments that take place within the union are
always presented in the context of the real problem, management policy
that devalues the life of all workers. 

Bandow’s description of how a rank-and-file movement organizes
demonstrates that understanding, its goal is to strengthen the union
as a whole, not to attack or undermine it. Here too, his writing
reflects what he lived, the meetings, arguments, tensions,
celebrations, camaraderie, disappointments, harsh language flung back
and forth even between friends, all contain the ring of truth. 

            Those complications are also those of the
characters who people the novel, all with lives outside the job, all
facing the pressures of working-class life in which opportunities are
few and (even in a more “stable” era) precarious. The violence in
the air post-Vietnam, when reaction was raising its ugly head trying
to push down progress toward social justice, the uncertainties as
those changes were reflected in personal relationships, are very much
part of novel’s depiction of workplace life.  The multi-racial
character of the shipyard and of Boston and its environs as much a
part of the story as the reaction to it, just as is the assertiveness
of women pushing back against silences that had prevailed.

            That reflects itself in the character of the
“sell-out” union president, who remembers with nostalgia, the
militancy, the willingness to fight, that built the union.  He
respects the new militancy of Shea and the others pushing for change,
as much as he does all in his power to undermine them.  He
rationalizes the compromises with management he makes every day, for
all he sees is a losing battle.  His weakness is part of the problem,
no doubt, but nonetheless, he is right – management holds the cards.
For those who lived through those times, reading GOLIATH is a reminder
of what happened when layoffs swept industry, fear of job loss leading
those who had resisted to accept the unacceptable as safety
regulations went out the window.  The end result is a feeling Bandow
well describes as he records Shea’s thoughts toward the end of the
novel as the combination of permanent layoffs, unrelenting speed-up,
breakdown of shifts and jobs assignments, leave workers demoralized,
the old union leadership out in the cold, younger union activists with
a sense of defeat. 

_“He knew they thought of their homes, fishing trips in New
Hampshire, mythic fiberglass boats skimming over the water, the week,
maybe two in a year that they prized as their own. They thought of
their own little girls and their sons in their yards. All gone. They
knew they would go to their graves with a rage they could never
concede. They stood by the basin and yearned for a bright, free
beginning. For a start they knew they would never be given.”_

That describes a reality that those newer to labor activism also need
to know for no gain should ever be taken for granted, unity needs to
be fought for again and again, struggles for justice at the workplace
need to be joined to those taking place in the communities where
people live and the broader forces pushing society in one direction or
another have to be engaged. Perhaps the greatest strength of the novel
lies in making clear that what matters is not just the outcome of a
particular battle – for win or lose, it is transitory.  Rather what
matters is what we take away from each dispute, each organizing
effort, how to integrate that in one’s own life.  Shea reflects
that challenge in himself, his personal weaknesses as much a part of
the story as his strengths.  The novel’s conclusion providing a
good starting point for thinking about how to accept loss, which way
to look for new beginnings, a search that – almost by definition, is
never easy. 

_“Cotty and Lonny [two of the rank-and-file leaders] watched them
go. They looked around, searching for Shea before they went in. He was
the last to join the line. Cotty said, “You did what you
could.” Shea nodded without hearing.  “For real, man,” Lonny
added, poking Shea in the chest. “I mean, we had men and women,
black and white, every shift pulling together. That’s real. That’s
something they can’t take from us.”_

_“Yeah, maybe,” he said as he followed them into the ship and
headed for his worksite. Shea’s legs ached to skip down the stairs,
to churn past the gates, to breathe in the freedom outside. Instead,
he stumbled his way past slaggy mounds of main deck debris toward his
gear.  The last whistle blew._

GOLIATH AT SUNSET is published by Hard Ball Press
[[link removed]].  It will be available for sale
December 15.  To order a copy email [email protected] 

 

_[KURT STAND was active in the labor movement for over 20 years
including as the elected North American Regional Secretary of the
International Union of Food and Allied Workers until 1997.  He is a
member of the Prince George’s County Branch of Metro DC DSA, and
periodically writes for the Washington Socialist, Socialist Forum, and
other left publications. He serves as a Portside Labor Moderator, and
is active within the reentry community of formerly incarcerated
people. Kurt Stand lives in Greenbelt, MD.]_

 

* Fiction
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* unions
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* shipyard workers
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* Boston
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* Boston schools
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* Vietnam veterans
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* white workers
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* Racism
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