How Union Leader Fighting Mob Accusations Is Holding the US Economy to Ransom – DNyuz

Cameron Henderson

October 1, 2024 11:00 am

Harold Daggett is not afraid of a fight.

The union leader has twice won a case against the U.S. Department of Justice for alleged ties to the mafia.

Now he has laid down the gauntlet for Joe Biden, threatening to “cripple” the US economy with strike action starting Tuesday that could halt container traffic from Maine to Texas, costing billions of dollars every day.

Longshoremen on the U.S. East and Gulf coasts are walking out as of 12:01 a.m. ET on Tuesday after a dispute over automation and pay.

Members of the New Jersey-based International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) union, which represents 47,000 longshoremen, had said they would stand down if an agreement could not be reached with the United States Maritime Alliance employers group.

The strike will be the first coastal-wide ILA strike since 1977, affecting ports that handle about half of the country’s maritime shipping.

The dock workers’ strike is already raising fears of shortages and delays for a wide range of goods, from cars and bananas to Christmas decorations, which could in turn lead to price spikes.

With less than forty days to go in one of the tightest presidential races in history, the economic impact could yet play a decisive role in the minds of voters, for whom the economy is the most important issue, as they go to the polls to go.

“These people today don’t know what a strike is,” said a fiery Mr. Daggett, the union’s president, in a recent video post. ‘I will paralyze you. I will paralyze you.’

For months, Daggett, 78, has threatened to close the 36 ports covered by his union if employers such as container ship operator Maersk and its APM Terminals North America do not make significant wage increases and halt terminal automation projects.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had urged Biden to use his authority to delay the strike for 80 days, saying it would be “unreasonable to allow a contract dispute to deliver such a shock to our economy.” .

However, the president said on Sunday that he had no intention of intervening.

Mr Daggett is pushing for wage increases of more than 60 percent.

“These companies are making billions of dollars,” he said in a recent interview. ‘They should take us with them. We got them where they are.”

‘Machines have no families’

He has spoken out against robots taking jobs away from dock workers, especially automated cranes and technology used to monitor trucks in and out of ports.

“Someone has to step into Congress and say, ‘Whoa, time out, this world is moving too fast for us, machines have to stop,’” he said.

“Who is going to support the families (of the workers)? Machines? Machines don’t have families.”

In separate calls with the United States Maritime Alliance, he said: “We will never allow automation to enter our union and try to put us out of work as long as I live.”

Mr Daggett has branded the pay rises offered by the Maritime Alliance as ‘insulting’.

Under the current contract, which expired on Monday, dock workers earn up to $39 an hour, but the ILA insists this will rise to $69 an hour over the next six years.

The average hourly wage in the US is $28.34, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics figures by Forbes. The average annual salary is $59,428.

Including overtime, longshoremen can earn more than $200,000, but longshoremen say they have to work long weeks to make that much money.

Blue collar references

Mr Daggett is a figure whose long trade union career has been shrouded in controversy. The dock worker, a third-generation ILA member, has worked for the union for 57 years and became international president in July 2011.

Despite his sterling reputation, the union baron earned $728,000 from the ILA last year, plus another $173,000 as president emeritus of a local union chapter, Politico reported.

He previously owned a 75-foot yacht, the Obsession, and was spotted by his members driving a Bentley, according to The New York Times.

The Justice Department, which has reportedly lost two cases against Mr Daggett, has accused him of being an “associate” of the Genovese crime family – one of the infamous “Five Families” of the American Mafia.

Mr. Daggett, who was charged with racketeering in 2005, took the witness stand and portrayed himself as a mob target despite evidence against him from a mob defector who said he was under mob control, the New reported York Times.

During that trial, one of Mr. Daggett’s co-defendants, a well-known gangster named Lawrence Ricci, disappeared. His decomposing body was found several weeks later in the trunk of a car outside a New Jersey restaurant, with the murder still unsolved.

Despite his union being a historical symbol of organized crime’s grip on union members, as depicted in the 1954 film “On the Waterfront,” Mr. Daggett was acquitted in both cases.

The union leader has previously criticized the Waterfront Commission, which was created to combat mafia control of the port, calling the accusations of mafia influence “total bullshit” 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. Let’s be real here. The Waterfront Commission has said for decades that good jobs only go to people with so-called ‘mob ties,’” he said in 2022.

Coming to a standstill

What impact America’s East Coast ports coming to a standstill could have on voters remains to be seen.

However, the strike poses a challenge for Democratic candidate Harris, who has so far managed a tricky balance between taking a pro-union stance and advancing a business-friendly economic agenda.

The vice president is backed by most major private sector unions but faces opposition from some rank-and-file members. The Teamsters union, the fifth largest in the US, has chosen not to support either Harris or Trump.

During her presidential campaign, Ms. Harris has sought to further cement her appeal among working-class voters in the Rust Belt, recently telling the Economic Club of Pittsburgh that she “has always been and always will be a strong supporter of workers and unions to stay”.

Meanwhile, the strike presents a golden opportunity for Trump, who is hoping for a repeat of 2016, when he managed to win over working-class voters in key battleground states.

The strike could allow the former president to deliver his message that the Biden era has saddled consumers with high prices and supply chain woes.

To summarize the line the Republican nominee will take, Jonathan Berry, a former top Labor Department official under Trump and now a managing partner at the law firm Boyden Gray, told Politico that an ILA strike would “give voters, especially union voters, another will provide additional impetus.” reason to want a historically successful dealmaker back in the White House.”

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