How did 50K dockworkers strike at US ports with only 25K jobs?

Nearly 50,000 dockworkers launched a strike this week at ports from Maine to Texas — but, in a bizarre quirk that has resulted from massive concessions to the union over the decades, the affected ports only employ 25,000.

There’s a massive gulf in the numbers between those who show up for work and total membership in the powerful International Longshoremen’s Association, which won a deal late Thursday for a 62% wage increase over the next six years.

That’s because half of the dockworkers at the East and Gulf coast ports are allowed to sit at home collecting “container royalties” negotiated decades ago to protect against job losses that result from innovation, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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

That report laid out how the ILA’s iron grip helps some workers at the expense of countless other blue-collar applicants by refusing to hire residents near the ports — and reignited concerns about the mob’s control over US shipping made famous in the classic film “On the Waterfront.”

“The absolute control of the International Longshoremen’s Association, AFL-CIO (ILA) over hiring in the Port for over 60 years has not only led to a lack of diversity and inclusion in waterfront employment, but also to the perpetuation of criminality and corruption,” the Waterfront Commission report found.

It also alleged that nearly 600 union members received more than $147 million in outsized salaries not required by the industry’s collective bargaining agreement — and for hours they don’t have to work at the ports.

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

The ILA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Daggett – who threatened to “cripple” adversaries during the strike – took the helm as ILA president in 2011. He raked in $728,000 in compensation last year from the union, and collected another $173,000 as president emeritus of a local union branch, according to Labor Department filings. 

He lives in a 7,316 square-foot house on a 10-acre lot in New Jersey with a luxury Bentley parked in front, and he previously owned a 76-foot yacht called the Obsession, according to Zillow and NJ Property Records.

His two sons are also union bigshots who reportedly make big bucks. 

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

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

While white male employees and relatives earned big, the union continued to employ discriminatory hiring practices, the Waterfront Commission report said.

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

“Six years and almost 1,300 additional workers later, very little progress has been made in diversifying the registered deep-sea longshore workers in the respective ILA locals,” Arsenault wrote.

When the union did hire employees from diverse backgrounds, it separated them by locals.

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

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

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

The commission did not approve 18% of the ILA’s longshore worker referrals because they were tied to organized crime, the report said.

Daggett has fought allegations of mob ties himself.

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

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

He described himself as a target of the mob – though a turncoat Mafia member had testified 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 major mob figure – disappeared. His body was found weeks later decomposing in the trunk of a car outside a New Jersey diner.

Ricci’s death remained unsolved, though speculation circulated that he was killed after refusing to plead guilty to avoid news reports of the trial.

Daggett was acquitted in two cases.

Over the years, Daggett has bad-mouthed the commission and called its accusations of mob ties “total bulls–t” and a “dark, ugly attack on Italian Americans.”

“It’s a damn tragedy for the Waterfront Commission to enjoy free rein and target Italian Americans as part of their historic anti-worker campaign,” Daggett said in 2022. “Let’s be real here. The Waterfront Commission has, for decades, claimed good jobs went to only those with so-called ‘mob ties.’”