How did 50,000 longshoremen strike at American ports with only 25,000 jobs?

Nearly 50,000 longshoremen launched a strike this week at ports from Maine to Texas — but, in a bizarre quirk resulting from massive union concessions over the decades, the affected ports employ just 25,000 people.

There is a huge gap between those who show up for work and the overall membership of the powerful International Longshoremen’s Association, which struck a deal late Thursday for a 62% pay increase over the next six years.

That’s because half of dockworkers at East Coast and Gulf Coast ports are being allowed to sit at home to collect the “container royalties” agreed to decades ago to protect against job losses due to innovation, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The impact of these no-show jobs at the ports — overseen by ILA’s well-paid and foul-mouthed president Harold Daggett — was part of an explosive 2019-2020 Waterfront Commission report cited by The Journal editorial board on Friday.

That report detailed how the ILA’s iron grip is helping some workers, at the expense of countless other workers, by refusing to employ residents near the ports – and reigniting concerns about mafia control over American shipping, made famous in the classic film “On the Waterkant.”

“The International Longshoremen’s Association, AFL-CIO (ILA) absolute control over port hiring for more than 60 years has not only led to a lack of diversity and inclusion in waterfront employment, but also perpetuating crime and corruption. ‘ according to the report of the Waterfront Commission.

It also alleged that nearly 600 union members received more than $147 million in excessive salaries not required by the industry’s collective bargaining agreement — and were spared hours of work at the ports.

“Those associated with union leadership or organized crime figures are rewarded with high-pay, low-show or no-work special compensation packages,” Walter Arsenault, then executive director of the Waterfront Commission, wrote in the port report.

The ILA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Daggett – who threatened to ‘paralyze’ opponents during the strike – took over as president of the ILA in 2011. Last year he raked in $728,000 in compensation from the union, and another $173,000 as president emeritus of a local union branch, Labor said. Department files.

He lives in a 7,316-square-foot house on a 25-acre lot in New Jersey with a luxury Bentley parked in front of it, and he previously owned a 75-foot yacht called the Obsession, according to Zillow and NJ Property Records.

His two sons are also union leaders who reportedly earn a lot of money.

Dennis Daggett is the executive vice president of the ILA and earned $250,156 in the fiscal year ending December 2022, according to ProPublica.

John Daggett, the general vice president of the Atlantic Coast District ILA, earned $264,228 during the same period.

While white male employees and family members earned high wages, the union continued to use discriminatory hiring practices, the Waterfront Commission report said.

The committee said it faced “virulent opposition” in its efforts to ensure the union required fair hiring practices.

“Six years and nearly 1,300 additional workers later, very little progress has been made in diversifying the registered deepwater longshore workforce among respective ILA locals,” Arsenault wrote.

When the union hired workers from different backgrounds, they were separated by locals.

The majority of incoming black longshoremen were placed in a predominantly black ILA local in Newark, NJ, while coveted positions in ILA Local 1 were largely given to white men, the report said.

The demographics of registered union maintenance workers and mechanics were even less diverse. Only one in 1,024 registered port maintenance workers across the port was a woman, the 2019-2020 report said.

The watchdog agency also accused the union of having ties to organized crime figures.

The committee did not approve 18% of referrals from ILA workers at the port because they were related to organized crime, the report said.

Daggett himself has disputed accusations of ties to the mafia.

In 2005, the Justice Department accused Daggett of being an “associate” with the Genovese crime family – one of the “Five Families” of the American Mafia.

Daggett took the witness stand that year after federal prosecutors charged him with racketeering.

He described himself as a mob target — even though a mob defector had testified that Daggett was under the mob’s thumb, The New York Times reported.

During the course of the trial, one of Daggett’s co-defendants – Lawrence Ricci, an alleged Big Mafia figure – disappeared. His body was found weeks later decomposed in the trunk of a car outside a New Jersey restaurant.

Ricci’s death remained unsolved, although speculation swirled that he was murdered after refusing to plead guilty to avoid news reports about the trial.

Daggett was acquitted in two cases.

Over the years, Daggett has blasted the commission, calling its accusations of ties to the mafia “total bulls–t” and a “dark, ugly attack on Italian Americans.”

“It is a damning tragedy for the Waterfront Commission to have a free hand and target Italian Americans as part of their historic anti-labor campaign,” Daggett said in 2022. “Let’s be real. The Waterfront Commission has argued for decades that good jobs only went to people with so-called ‘mob ties’.”