Latest possible containerization

Trade in the post-WWII period has really been defined by the adoption of standardized shipping containers, dramatically reducing costs, boosting trade, and promoting globalization. How can you delay it as long as possible and what are the implications on international relations if international shipping remains comparatively expensive? I'm especially curious what the decreased trade will have on China in the 70s and 80s. I suspect overregulation and union opposition might be the key to delaying standardization. Any thoughts?
 
Prior to the adoption of containers, the industries of a given region were heavily dependent upon a nearby port. When that port was shut down by a strike, those industries quickly lost the ability to acquire supplies and export products. Containers made the industries of a region less dependent upon any given port. Thus, a strike in any given port would only result in a shift of traffic to another port. To put things another way, the advent of the container in some ports deprived organized labor of its chief means of opposing the adoption of containerization in others.

This meant that any union-led campaign against containerization would have to have been extraordinarily broad-based, involving either coordinated work stoppages along the entirety of a seacoast or work stoppages involving railroad workers and truck drivers as well as longshoremen. Such large-scale action would have required either a labor movement that was strong in all of the ports of a given seacoast or a labor movement that could coordinate the actions of several different unions.

In short, in order to delay containerization, one needs to have a labor movement that was quite different from the labor movements of the 1960s of our own time line.
 
Top