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Bentley Drivers of the World, Unite!
Meet the union boss making $900,000 who shut down U.S. ports.
By
The Editorial Board
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Oct. 2, 2024 5:55 pm ET


If you haven’t heard of Harold Daggett, by all means you should. He’s the head of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) who has shut down a good chunk of American commerce by leading his workers on strike and closing East and Gulf Coast ports.

Mr. Daggett could have been a character from the 1950s movie classic “On the Waterfront.” While presenting himself as a man of the people, the union chief made more than $900,000 last year. The New York Times reported in 2017 that he owned a 76-foot yacht and rode around in a Bentley luxury car.

Mr. Daggett’s union has a stranglehold on the ports, and as you can read nearby he intends to use it. “I will cripple you,” he said in an interview last month, referring to the ports and the U.S. economy. He means it.

The Justice Department has brought civil and criminal charges against Mr. Daggett for conspiring with mob bosses. While he won both cases, the ILA’s port stranglehold is a racket. Workers earn $39 an hour, often for doing little. This is one reason U.S. ports rank among the least efficient in the world. Mr. Daggett is demanding $69 an hour. In 2010 he said longshoremen should make more than $400,000. Some now do with overtime.

Containerization and automation have reduced port jobs, but the union’s contract entitles longshoremen to what is effectively a guaranteed income of tens of thousands of dollars regardless of whether they work. Some local union chiefs make hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing nothing. Most U.S. workers no doubt wish they could get paid for not working.

But look who’s locking arms with the Bentley-driving proletariat. None other than President Biden. “Now is not the time for ocean carriers to refuse to negotiate a fair wage for these essential workers while raking in record profits,” Mr. Biden said Tuesday. Is the 50% wage increase over six years that port employers have offered the union not fair?

Donald Trump was hardly better. “American workers should be able to negotiate for better wages, especially since the shipping companies are mostly foreign flag vessels,” the Republican declared. The reason most ocean carriers are foreign is because union work rules have rendered the U.S. shipbuilding and shipping industries uncompetitive globally.

Mr. Trump could be blaming Mr. Biden for refusing to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act to end the strike with an 80-day cooling off period. That’s what George W. Bush did to end a West Coast work stoppage in 2002.

One reason Congress passed Taft-Hartley in 1947 was to reduce the extortionary power that union chiefs held over the American economy. Mr. Daggett wants to return to those days, and Mr. Biden wants to help him.


Link: Daggett