LOCAL 10's political culture was seriously tested by McCarthyism in the 1950s. It was also put to a second test in the early 1960s. This time, however, the challenge came from a contractual agreement signed by the union, not from the government or the employers' association. The agreement came to be known as the “Mechanization and Modernization Agreement” (M&M), the first of which was signed in 1961. This agreement allowed employers to introduce radically new technologies on the waterfront. Once in place, these new technologies seriously transformed the operational circumstances of West Coast longshoring. The industry became capital intensive and work came to resemble factory tasks. Compared to conventional dockwork, the job became routinized and machinepaced. Traditional craft skills became unnecessary, the sequencing of ship work was preplanned by computer, and control of the labor process was centralized. The second M&M, signed in 1966, also had a profound impact on the waterfront. That agreement modified dispatch rules and job categories. Section 9.43, for example, was added at this time. The new M&M Agreements reduced the union's ability to use the contract as a weapon, and initially allowed employers to determine manning scales.

All the conditions were present for class relations on the waterfront to be radically altered. Shifting to capital intensity would, if critics of automation proved correct, free employers from their dependence on workers' knowledge and initiative, settling the issue of workplace regime in management's favor once and for all. The new technology would accomplish what the government and employers' association had been unable to do.