October 2, 2024- Dockworkers at dozens of U.S. ports are digging in for a massive pay increase, seeking to flex their power in a strike that aims to strangle the flow of trade across much of the country.
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“This is going down in history what we’re doing here,” Harold Daggett, the head of the International Longshoremen’s Association, told hundreds of dockworkers on the picket lines at the East Coast’s busiest port at New York-New Jersey. “Nothing is going to move without us.”
According to The Wall Street Journal, Daggett rejected an offer late Monday of a 50% wage increase over six years, a boost from an earlier proposed 40% increase in wages, along with other improvements in benefits. The ILA wants to raise the base hourly rate for its roughly 45,000 members to $69 from $39, a 77% pay increase, over six years as a condition to sit down to talks with maritime employers, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.
Dockworkers typically earn a six-figure annual salary because of work rules and overtime requirements, according to The Wall Street Journal. In the financial year that ended in 2020, more than half of 3,726 dockworkers at the Port of New York and New Jersey earned more than $150,000, according to a report by the port’s regulator. About one in five dockworkers at the port earned over $250,000 that year.