Charleston’s Hugh K. Leatherman shipping terminal represents the State of South Carolina’s roughly $1 billion investment to expand the state’s shipping sector. The terminal sports five massive ship-to-shore cranes, which rank among the tallest on the East Coast. Nonunion crane operators — state employees who have handled such work since Leatherman opened in 2021 and for years before that at other port facilities — work alongside unionized private sector employees to keep the port running.
But union bosses of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) think that the port should be effectively shut down until they get control over all jobs at the facility — even the crane jobs that the union’s members have never performed. They’ve backed up that coercive vision by suing any cargo carrier that docks at Leatherman until the union gains control of all crane lift equipment jobs at the facility. In December 2022, the Biden National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) outrageously ruled 2-1 against a challenge by the South Carolina Ports Authority (SCPA), holding that ILA union bosses’ secondary boycott scheme was lawful. Then the U.S. Court of Appeals, also by a 2-1 vote, affirmed that disastrous ruling. […]
“ILA union officials have a well-earned reputation for valuing power over the well-being of workers,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President and Legal Director William Messenger. “While pursuing monopolistic schemes like this that upend the livelihoods of innocent nonunion workers, union agents were also organizing deals in which mob-linked longshoremen from New York and New Jersey could get paid for 27 hours of ‘work’ per day.
NATIONAL RIGHT TO WORK LEGAL DEFENSE FOUNDATION
All contents from this article were originally published on the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation Website.
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