NEW YORK — A looming dockworkers strike threatens to close down East Coast ports and snarl the nationwide financial system simply earlier than the election. Crippling the financial system is not only a byproduct of a dockworkers strike — it’s the purpose, in response to the essential chief of the union threatening the disruption.
The choice to strike is essentially within the fingers of the mercurial and tough-as-nails head of the dockworkers union, Harold Daggett, a local New Yorker who’s been accused of getting mob ties. Recently he’s been crucial of the Biden administration’s labor document and provocatively requested the place the president has been for his members.
In a single video submit, the place he promised to harm the financial system if the union’s calls for weren’t met, Daggett envisioned what’s going to occur when his employees stroll out: The primary week, the strike will dominate the headlines. The second week, automobile sellers will begin laying folks off. By week three, malls will start closing. Quickly building employees would lose their jobs.
“In as we speak’s world, I’ll cripple you,” he mentioned lately in a video post. “I’ll cripple you.”
It’s unlikely the injury to the financial system can be as swift or extreme as he imagines, however Daggett isn’t taking part in round.
For over a decade, Daggett has been the president of the Worldwide Longshoremen’s Affiliation, which represents the tens of hundreds of employees who load and unload cargo at ports alongside the Atlantic Seaboard and within the Gulf of Mexico.
The union’s structure permits Daggett to name a strike with out a vote of his members. He has pledged one if the union’s calls for aren’t met when a six-year grasp contract with the transport trade expires on the finish of September.
Daggett has hardly ever given public interviews and he declined to be interviewed for this text. The ILA as a substitute prefers getting its message out in pleasant boards, together with by Fb posts and YouTube movies.
A strike now seems more and more seemingly and a significant disruption to the provision chain may throw a wrench into Vice President Kamala Harris’ sunny financial message. The strike could possibly be injected virtually instantly into the presidential campaigns as a result of it could start the identical day as Tuesday’s vice presidential debate.
Whereas President Joe Biden considers himself essentially the most pro-union president in historical past, Daggett — like the top of the Teamsters who has been inflicting complications for Democrats — doesn’t appear to be shopping for it.
In line with the ILA’s biography of their chief, Daggett is a third-generation member of the union. He was born in New York and lives in New Jersey, the 2 states which can be collectively residence to the East Coast’s largest cargo port. He rose by the ranks of the highly effective New Jersey-based union native, 1804-1, and have become the top of the entire ILA in 2011.
A much less congenial model of occasions, present in court docket data filed over time by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, allege Daggett rose by the union’s ranks partially due to his ties to the mob.
Throughout the pandemic, Daggett’s employees stored going whereas many others stayed residence. Delivery firms additionally made huge quantities of cash — raking in document income and handing out big administration bonuses. However, in Daggett’s eyes, his laborers by no means received their piece of that pie.
Now he desires a contract that ensures massive raises for his members and a ban on robots taking longshore employees’ jobs.
Some numbers, floated by trade sources, recommend Daggett is asking for near 80 % raises over the subsequent six years. The union rejects that however launched numbers suggesting the determine is nearer to 60 %.
Anybody who’s stunned hasn’t been paying consideration. Over a decade in the past, Daggett mentioned he wished everyone working on the port could make $400,000.
Whereas the trade is small — shrunken by generations of automation — it’s highly effective partially as a result of the union represents employees at a choke level in worldwide commerce. The roles stay extremely wanted and fairly profitable for blue collar work.
In 2020, over 600 longshore employees in New York and New Jersey made over a quarter million dollars, in response to the final out there information from a bi-state company that used to police the port.
Daggett, a union official, does effectively too. He obtained $728,000 final 12 months from the ILA, plus one other $173,000 as president emeritus of 1804-1, in response to union filings with the Division of Labor. (For comparability, the heads of the AFL-CIO, Teamsters and autoworkers union all make lower than $300,000 a 12 months, although the heads of the actors and main league gamers’ unions make more than $1 million.)
America Maritime Alliance, which negotiates on behalf of the port trade, has accused Daggett’s crew of failing to come back to the desk. The ILA, in flip, mentioned in a press release that’s deceptive and there have been “a number of communications” in current weeks however that the trade is providing an “unacceptable” wage package deal.
Recently, Daggett appears to be distancing himself from individuals who may look like his allies, together with the Democrats within the White Home and in key port states.
He publicly dissed Biden, has not requested for assist avoiding a strike from his ally New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and criticized a deal to keep away from a strike reached final 12 months by the union that represents West Coast dockworkers.
Daggett’s bluster is on full show when he rails towards automation, which the ILA usually defines as any know-how that might change a human employee’s job.
“Somebody has to get into Congress and say, ‘Whoa, timeout, this world goes too quick for us, machines received to cease,’” Daggett advised one interlocutor in a current pleasant interview. “Sure, we’re getting good youngsters out of MIT and all these locations. Yeah, they’re all sensible, however what good is it in the event you’re going to place folks out of labor? Who’s going to assist their households, machines? Machines don’t have households.”
Daggett lately expressed main disappointment in Biden for the way the president helped keep away from a strike final 12 months on the West Coast. Biden dispatched officers to dealer a deal that included 32 percent increases for dockworkers there however that didn’t present what Daggett considers ample protections towards automation.
“The place is the president of the USA? He’s not preventing for us,” Daggett mentioned in a current video. “In L.A., he advised the union, hurry up and get a contract. That’s the mentality they’ve. They don’t even know what the hell they’re doing as we speak. Nicely, I do know what I’m doing, I’m going to avoid wasting all people’s job.”
Whereas that isn’t essentially the agreed-upon model of the occasions — the West Coast union praises Biden’s time in workplace and has endorsed Harris — it’s vital to listen to how Daggett is framing that episode. Not way back, the West Coast union, the Worldwide Longshore and Warehouse Union, was thought-about the extra strike susceptible. Daggett’s remarks present that appears to have out of the blue modified.
The final time any White Home used the strike prevention powers given to presidents by the Taft-Hartley Act was in 2002, when President George W. Bush used the legislation to interrupt an deadlock involving dockworkers on the West Coast citing the risk to the military buildup ahead of the war in Iraq. (On Wednesday, the ILA pledged to proceed transferring navy cargo, even when it went on strike.)
Against this, East Coast dockworkers haven’t been on strike since 1977.
Maybe that’s the reason few folks thought Daggett’s strike risk was actual till lately, although he’s been telegraphing his powerful stance for months. Throughout a July 2023 speech to a significant gathering of ILA members, Daggett warned transport big Maersk to make a deal or else.
“Get up, world,” he mentioned. “I’ve a message for Copenhagen, that’s the house of Maersk: Don’t fuck with the maritime unions world wide. We are going to shut you down!”
Nonetheless, as lately as early August, Maersk’s CEO mentioned a strike was “extremely unlikely.” This modified rapidly. The corporate introduced this week it plans to cost increased costs to maneuver cargo out and in of East Coast ports due to the potential strike.
Others see greater than only a whole lot for his members at play, together with legacy and dynasty constructing. Daggett’s son, Dennis Daggett, is now the top of the highly effective New Jersey native his father as soon as led and the ILA’s govt vice chairman.
An individual accustomed to the maritime trade, granted anonymity to debate a fragile state of affairs, mentioned a part of the dynamic proper now’s Harold Daggett’s want to see his son change him atop the union; the higher the brand new contract, the higher the probabilities of that occuring.
The Biden administration has by no means used Taft-Hartley and doesn’t plan to. That alone is a significant victory for the ILA, as a result of threatening to invoke Taft-Hartley would lower Daggett’s leverage.
If Daggett is grateful, he hasn’t proven it.
In a single current video, he criticized Biden’s response to the Baltimore bridge collapse. Daggett described a dialog he had with Biden concerning the bridge and accused the president of not doing sufficient to verify dockworkers had been stored entire. “I by no means received no assist from the federal government,” Daggett mentioned.
The White Home and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s workplace each rejected this model of occasions.
“The president is pleased with his assist for port employees,” Biden spokesperson Robyn Patterson mentioned in a press release. “That’s why he mobilized a whole-of-government response to get the Port of Baltimore rapidly reopened so employees may get again on the job following the Key Bridge collapse and why he labored intently with state and native companions to make sure impacted employees received the advantages and help they wanted.”
Carter Elliott, spokesperson for Moore, a Democrat, pointed to work with a union native and to momentary aid efforts that “supplied greater than $13 million in direct monetary help to greater than 3,300 temporarily-displaced port employees.”
Alongside his rise to energy, Daggett has been dogged by allegations that he benefited from mob assist in numerous methods. Twenty years in the past, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn accused him of benefiting from a mob conspiracy to elect him head of the ILA, which he was not on the time. He was acquitted.
Throughout the trial, Daggett denied wrongdoing and mentioned he rose by the ranks due to employee assist. Daggett testified {that a} hit man who was cooperating with the federal government within the case had put a gun to his head years earlier as a result of Daggett was intent on transferring the union from Manhattan to New Jersey, the place lots of his members work. Additionally they relied on a star witness — the hit man who co-founded the gang the Jets and was clinically deaf so may solely learn lips — who wasn’t thought-about credible by the jury.
One of many co-defendants within the case was lacking through the trial and later discovered lifeless within the trunk of a automobile outside a diner in New Jersey — additionally acquitted however lifeless.
Nonetheless, even after that case fell aside, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn continued to explain Daggett as “an affiliate of the Genovese household” in a separate however associated racketeering case that has been lingering in court docket for practically a decade.
Within the years since, Daggett and the ILA helped push New Jersey to dissolve a bi-state police company meant to maintain the union and mob in test.
