Biden NLRB Decision Hurts South Carolina and America as a Whole
In December 2022, President Joe Biden’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) handed a major 2-1 victory to the controversial International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) union in its quest to control who is hired at seaports all along the East and Gulf Coasts.
Two Biden appointees gave a green light to ILA bosses to sue any ocean carriers that dock at the Henry K. Leatherman Terminal in Charleston, S.C., which had opened in 2021, for hundreds of millions of dollars for supposedly violating the union’s contract with them. (A Trump appointee dissented.)
Clear Goal of ILA Lawsuit Was to Bully Port Authority Into Selling Out Employees
The ILA hierarchy’s clear motive in suing two carriers that had docked at Leatherman, and in its threat 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 the freedom of union-free port employees who then operated heavy equipment.
Until recently, ship-to-shore crane operation and certain other jobs at all of Charleston’s terminals, as well as at Wilmington, N.C.’s and Savannah, Ga.’s terminals, were done by union-free workers, even as other port jobs were done by workers who were subject to ILA control.
Biden NLRB Bureaucratically Legalized Abusive Tactic Congress Had Banned in 1947
National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix said it’s no mystery why, after Leatherman opened five years ago, ILA bosses resorted to a “secondary boycott,” a tactic Congress had barred in 1947, and then pressed the Biden NLRB to nullify the secondary-boycott ban by bureaucratic fiat.
“For decades,” explained Mr. Mix, “the Charleston-Wilmington-Savannah ‘hybrid model’ for port labor relations prevented ILA officials from getting tight control over who gets hired for every kind of waterfront job. The Leatherman coup represented a major step towards the elimination of the ‘hybrid model’ from all U.S. port terminals.”
Union Boss-Ruled Terminal ‘Woefully Underutilized’
Unfortunately, union-only control over Leatherman has come at a high price, including lost employment opportunities, added costs for shippers, and poor investment returns for the state and federal taxpayers who together paid for the terminal, at a total cost of approximately $1.2 billion so far.
Largely because of productivity squashing work rules that ILA union bosses have been able to foist on Leatherman, where they now have control over all front-line employees, but not on other Charleston terminals, costs for shippers and their customers are substantially higher at Leatherman.
As journalist David Wren reported for the South Carolina Daily Gazette back in April, container lines have “balked at paying higher fees, leaving Leatherman woefully underutilized.”
Leatherman Now Operating At Barely More Than 10% Of Its Annual Capacity
Throughout the first eight months of FY 2026, Mr. Wren added, Leatherman, which has an annual capacity for 700,000 cargo containers, “handled just 51,807 containers measured in 20-foot increments.”
“By gutting the nearly 80-year-old ban on predatory secondary boycotts in U.S. labor law, Biden NLRB appointees David Prouty and Gwynne Wilcox, along with the divided Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals panel that enabled them, locked independent workers out of port jobs,” charged Mr. Mix.
“They also turned a $1.2 billion terminal into a ‘financial drain,’ as an April 6 Charleston Post & Courier headline accurately stated.”
Committee Staff, Friendly Lawmakers Working Together On a Legislative Solution
“Since the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on the Biden NLRB’s lawless ruling, a judicial solution remains possible, but it could be a long time before that happens,” continued Mr. Mix.
As this Newsletter edition went to press in late April, Right to Work legislative staffers were inviting friendly lawmakers from the Palmetto State and elsewhere to meet to discuss a statutory remedy to the Biden NLRB’s misbegotten ruling in SCPA v. ILA.
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