The union boss who closed the ports is playing hardball – DNyuz

Nearly twenty years ago, Harold J. Daggett was accused of being part of the Mafia’s attempts to gain control of a powerful labor union, the International Longshoremen’s Association.

He was a mid-level employee of the union. After a high-profile trial, a jury acquitted him of fraud and racketeering conspiracy, and he joined enthusiastic supporters outside Brooklyn’s federal courthouse. He gestured toward the building and asked the audience, “Which door do I have to go through to get my reputation back?”

Now, after 13 years as union president, Mr. Daggett is seeking a different kind of victory.

He is leading a strike that began Tuesday, halting most trade at a dozen major ports on the East Coast and Gulf Coast. The union, whose members transport containers and other cargo to and from ships, is demanding much higher wages, better working conditions and limits on labor-saving technology.

Mr Daggett has portrayed the strike as a battle against large multinational companies that have made outsized profits during the pandemic-related supply chain chaos. He has argued that his 47,000 members have the upper hand because their work is essential to the automakers, retailers and other businesses that rely on the ports.

“We’re going to win this case,” Daggett, 78, said Tuesday, along with an expletive, as members protested outside a port terminal in New Jersey. “They can’t survive for too long.”

Some labor experts say Mr. Daggett is well positioned to get a good deal. “When they stop working, the goods stop moving,” said William Brucher, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations. “They have real economic power and influence.”

But despite all the bravado on display this week, the question of reputation still hangs over Mr. Daggett’s head.

His style is autocratic, some members say. The union has struggled to match the gains of its West Coast counterpart. And questions about the influence of organized crime on the ILA have never been fully resolved.

The union is known for its top-down approach.

Mr Daggett’s confrontational approach to negotiations may be a reflection of his roots – and of the union’s history.

He was a third-generation longshoreman, born in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, once an ILA power base, spent his childhood in Queens, then joined the Navy before working as a mechanic on the docks and in recent years as a union official, no more . working on the waterfront.

The union has long been known for its generous salaries. Mr. Daggett was paid by the international union and one of its largest locals, in Newark, totaling more than $900,000 last year and more than $7 million over the past decade, according to an analysis of Labor Department documents by The New York Times.

By contrast, the president of the West Coast Dockworkers’ organization, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, earned just over $234,000 last year, which is closer to what the leaders of major U.S. unions like the United Automobile Workers earn.

Another major difference between the two longshore unions is the way they are managed and structured. The ILA has long had dominant presidents who controlled many, if not most, of the instruments of power. There is no indication that the union has asked all its members to vote to authorize a strike, a step most unions take and announce publicly before a strike. And some members said they had not been informed by the union about plans for strike pay.

When West Coast dockworkers broke away from the ILA to form their own group in the 1930s, they established a more democratic culture that helped win grassroots support and make significant gains, labor historians say.

Several ILA members said in interviews that they were angry that Mr. Daggett had not received better retirement benefits. These workers requested anonymity because they did not want to openly criticize the union leader, especially during a strike, and feared reprisals.

A union spokesman did not respond to emailed questions this week and declined recent requests for an interview with Mr. Daggett.

Profits lag behind those on the West Coast.

Another difference between the ILA and the West Coast Union concerns the wage and pension benefits they have secured.

“Not always, but most of the time the ILWU contract is better,” said John Ahlquist, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who has studied unions. “The union leaders on the East Coast must demonstrate that they can perform and negotiate as well as the West Coast.”

Those at today’s top wages can earn well over $100,000 a year, including overtime, and sometimes $200,000 in the Port of New York and New Jersey. But less experienced union members earn far less, and the ILA has said it is committed to closing that gap.

Under the ILA contract that expired Tuesday, the highest wage was $39 per hour. In the West Coast contract that expired last year, longshoremen earned $46.23 an hour, and in their new agreement – ​​reached after a worker slowdown but without a strike – wages will gradually rise to $60.85 by 2027.

Mr. Daggett told CNBC on Tuesday that he was looking for a 61.5 percent pay increase over six years, which would put the highest hourly wage above $64. The group representing port employers, the United States Maritime Alliance, has said it is offering a nearly 50 percent increase for that period.

In terms of retirement benefits, West Coast longshoremen are entitled to defined benefit pensions that provide significant, predictable retirement benefits. Some ILA members have such pensions, but not all.

A union official — Mr. Daggett’s son, Dennis A. Daggett, an executive vice president often mentioned as a potential successor — said last month that the ILA would ask employers to increase their contributions to a defined contribution plan. which does not pay out fixed amounts upon retirement.

And then there’s the issue of job security, a perennial concern on both coasts. The West Coast agreement allows for “fully mechanized and robotic maritime terminals.” The ILA contract contains more restrictive language, banning equipment that is “without human interaction.”

But that provision hasn’t stopped operators at some East Coast ports from introducing large cranes that can sort containers without a human operator directing the movements.

“We will never allow automation to invade our union and try to put us out of work as long as I live,” Harold Daggett has said. But he has not detailed how he would achieve that in a new contract.

Questions about organized crime haunt the union.

In 1949, a New York Sun reporter won a Pulitzer Prize for articles on Mafia involvement and corruption in the ILA, which inspired the Marlon Brando film “On the Waterfront” – along with numerous criminal cases.

In the 1950s, New York and New Jersey formed the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor with the goal of eradicating organized crime in the harbors. But in recent years, the ILA, trucking companies and New Jersey politicians tried to abolish the commission, saying it was outdated.

New York waged a legal battle to keep it alive, but last year the Supreme Court sided with New Jersey, allowing it to withdraw. New York has created its own waterfront commission, but the state’s ports are much smaller than those in New Jersey.

The decision was a blow to those who believed the Mafia was still a problem at the ports of New Jersey and New York.

In a letter submitted to the Supreme Court in 2021, two senior FBI agents from the New York and Newark offices said: “Successful federal prosecutions have exposed the continued influence of the Genovese and Gambino organized crime families on the International Longshoremen’s Association and corporations brought to light on the waterfront. .”

The post ‘They Can’t Survive Too Long’: The Union Boss Who Shut Down the Ports Is Playing Hardball first appeared in the New York Times.