An organization that brags about putting people out of work and exists to exclude workers cannot be pro-worker.
An organization that brags about putting people out of work and exists to exclude workers cannot be pro-worker.
W hen a strike is in the public eye, anyone opposing the union can count on being denounced as “anti-worker.” Yet 94 percent of American private-sector workers are not union members, and the behavior of some of the unions that represent the dwindling 6 percent is a great illustration of why they don’t want what organized labor is selling.
International Longshoremen’s Association president Harold Daggett is positively gleeful about his union’s ability to get workers laid off. In a video from four weeks ago, Daggett was bragging about what an ILA strike could inflict on the rest of the economy. “Guys who sell cars can’t sell cars because the cars ain’t coming in off the ships. They get laid off,” Daggett said.
He continued to say stores selling imported clothing would go out of business, and construction workers would get laid off for not having materials. “I’ll cripple you, and you have no idea what that means,” Daggett said.
Daggett is a bully, plain and simple. He is willing to inflict any amount of pain on any number of people so long as he gets what he wants. That includes people trying to recover from a hurricane right now, and it includes workers in every other industry except his.
He wants a complete ban on automation in ports, among other things. That demand contributes to American ports being among the least efficient in the world, which is terrible for workers.
It’s terrible for truck drivers, who have to wait in long lines to pick up containers. Many drivers are paid per delivery, so waiting in line directly reduces their pay. It costs them extra money in fuel from idling, which also contributes to air-pollution problems that often plague port areas.
It’s terrible for manufacturing workers who rely on imports to make their products. About half of U.S. imports are intermediate goods used in domestic production. Yet the United Auto Workers union has expressed “solidarity” with the ILA despite the strike’s making it harder to get parts from abroad and harder to export finished cars from the No. 1 automotive port in Baltimore.
And it’s terrible for workers in every industry, who are also consumers and would not like access to fruits and vegetables, clothes and shoes, and any number of other products cut off because Harold Daggett is pitching a fit.
In a very basic sense, at least right now, the ILA is anti-work, so it is anti-worker. Unions skim workers’ paychecks to accumulate strike funds, money that is withheld from workers until the union orders them to not work. Many unionized workers would probably prefer not to have that money taken from them in the first place.
The ILA has two basic purposes as an organization. The first is to fix the compensation of its members above the market rate. It does so by negotiating labor contracts backed by the monopoly power it is given under federal labor law. Because the ILA is the exclusive bargaining agent for workers at every major port on the East and Gulf Coasts, there is no direct competition with its members for longshore labor, and it can demand monopoly prices.
That’s good for ILA members’ pay, no doubt. According to 2020 data from the Waterfront Commission, a majority of longshoremen in New York and New Jersey made over $150,000, and one-third made over $200,000, and that’s not including additional container royalty payments or the value of fringe benefits.
The further above the market rate the pay is, the more union bosses can skim in dues. That allows them to amass massive war chests to pay themselves exorbitant salaries. When you include his salary from being president emeritus of a local union, Harold Daggett makes over $1 million a year, and he owns a Bentley and a mansion and used to own a yacht. Two of his sons are vice presidents in the union and make hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
All of that money combined with monopolistic power over something as basic as transportation makes union bosses attractive associates for organized crime, a temptation that many ILA bosses have been unable to resist for decades. Figures such as ILA “president for life” Joseph P. Ryan were legendary for their corruption, but mob connections are not ancient history. In 2020, the Waterfront Commission found, “Today, every terminal within the Port [of New York and New Jersey] still has special compensation packages given to certain ILA longshore workers, the majority of whom are white males connected to organized crime figures or union leadership.”
The second basic purpose of the ILA is to exclude other workers from becoming longshoremen. That might sound contradictory, given that the union also ensures more longshoremen than would otherwise be needed work by opposing labor-saving automation. But excluding workers is how unions maintain their power.
The ILA has to exclude workers because a lot of people are willing to take a job that requires little formal education but can pay $200,000 or more per year. Who decides which workers get those coveted positions? The ILA.
It uses that power to reward people with connections, starting with family, as many longshore jobs are essentially inherited. Once a worker is in the ILA, promotions are based on connections and seniority, not performance. Hiring and promoting based on merit is as foreign to the ILA as it is to any DEI proponent.
DEI proponent Joe Biden supports the ILA even though its workforce is not “diverse.” The Waterfront Commission found in 2020 that the ILA practices something akin to segregation by placing the vast majority of its black longshore members in New York and New Jersey in one local and reserving more desirable longshore positions for the mostly white members in another local. Out of 1,072 maintenance workers and mechanics, only 25 were black. Only one was a woman.
The ILA is far from alone in excluding workers to protect its power. The American Medical Association does a similar thing by controlling medical schools to limit the supply of physicians, as Milton Friedman wrote decades ago. It raises physician pay above the market rate with its monopoly power and supports work rules that limit what non-physicians are allowed to do that are, in many cases, at least as silly as the ILA’s rules at the ports.
Unions do not exist to spread the higher pay of their members to more workers. They exist to exclude more workers and prevent them from spoiling their high pay and diluting their power. The ILA is great at doing that and has been for years.
If “pro-worker” means punishing exponentially more workers than are benefiting, allowing mobbed-up organizations to skim workers’ paychecks, and destroying competition and merit in the labor market, then nobody should want to be “pro-worker.” If “pro-worker” means doing what’s best for workers, that means opposing the ILA’s absurd demands and ending this strike.