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Independent Workers to Be Locked Out of Port Jobs
ILA Union Dons Set to Take Over All of Charleston’s Terminals
In December 2022, President Joe Biden’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) handed a major victory to top bosses of the controversial International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) union in their quest to control who is hired at seaports all along the East and Gulf Coasts of the U.S.
Biden appointees David Prouty and Gwynne Wilcox, both ex-union lawyers, gave a green light to ILA bosses to sue any ocean carriers that dock at the recently opened Henry K. Leatherman Terminal in Charleston, S.C., for hundreds of millions of dollars for supposedly violating the union’s contract with them. (Trump appointee John Ring dissented.)
Biden NLRB Radicals Declared Illegal Secondary Boycott to Be Legal
The ILA hierarchy’s clear motive in suing two carriers that had docked at Leatherman, and threatening to sue others if they did the same, was to bully the South Carolina Ports Authority (SCPA), with whom the union had no contract, into selling out union-free port employees who operate heavy equipment.
At all Charleston terminals, as well as at terminals in Wilmington, N.C., and Savannah, Ga., ship-to-shore crane operation and certain other jobs have for roughly 50 years been done by union-free employees, even as other jobs are done by workers who are subject to ILA control.
But under a new compact forged between the SCPA and ILA kingpins in June, a few months after the SCPA’s efforts to get the Biden NLRB’s outrageous ruling judicially overturned came to an unsuccessful end, the ILA brass is set to take over all of Charleston’s front-line port jobs.
When ILA Bigwigs Control Who Gets Hired, Union Cronies Get Special Favors
National Right to Work Committee Vice President Matthew Leen said it’s no mystery why ILA kingpins were willing, after Leatherman opened in 2021, to resort to a “secondary boycott,” a tactic that Congress barred in 1947, and then press the Biden NLRB to nullify the secondary-boycott ban by bureaucratic fiat.
“For decades,” explained Mr. Leen, “the Charleston-Wilmington-Savannah ‘hybrid model’ for port labor relations has prevented ILA officials from getting tight control over who gets hired for every kind of waterfront job.
“From international President Harold Daggett and his son, ILA second-in command Dennis Daggett, on down, ILA bosses want to be able to exploit their clout over who can work at port after port to reward their cronies.
“And these cronies often turn out to be their own friends and relatives, and/or people with close ties to crime families.
“As of 2020, there were more than 300 specially favored workers in New York Harbor ports who were earning more than $300,000 apiece a year. And a number of these are ‘workers’ who apparently do little or no work.”
The so-called “framework related to the full reopening” of the Leatherman Terminal just executed by the SCPA and the ILA hierarchy represents, unfortunately, a major step towards the elimination of the “hybrid model” from all U.S. ports.
In order at last to end the costly secondary boycott of Leatherman, SCPA President Barbara Melvin and her associates agreed to phase out union-free jobs at all three of Charleston’s terminals.
The deal specifically states that all future hirings for front-line positions “at port facilities” will be “done by the ILA.”
Right to Work Supporters Still Have Chance to Rescue ‘Hybrid Model’
“While the ‘framework’ has not yet been finalized, it now appears that, in the future, submission to the monopoly bargaining control of ILA union dons will be a requirement for working at the Port of Charleston,” said Mr. Leen.
“But Right to Work advocates still have a chance to save the ‘hybrid model.’ While the Biden NLRB and one divided federal appellate court have blessed ILA bosses’ scheme to use secondary boycotts to wipe out all union-free port jobs, the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to take up this issue.
“Ultimately, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys may get the chance to help sway the High Court to put the kibosh on predatory secondary boycotts by ILA and other union bosses.
“Moreover, if voters reject a second term for the Biden/Harris Administration this fall, as polls indicate may well happen, the NLRB’s outrageous ruling in ILA v. SCPA could be ripe for reversal.”
This article was originally published in our monthly newsletter. Go here to access previous newsletter posts.
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