With inflation still sky high and on the heels of a devastating hurricane that wiped out the southeast, International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) President Harold Daggett has officially gone on strike after demanding a 77% raise over five years and a guarantee that their jobs wouldn’t be replaced by artificial intelligence, despite hauling in over $900,000, making him a literal top 1% earner.
The Daily Caller reports:
ILA began its major strike affecting 36 ports along the East and Gulf Coasts early Tuesday morning, raising the possibility that shortages and price increases hit inflation-weary American consumers if the work stoppage is not resolved sooner than later. Daggett, who has accused the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) of exploiting ILA labor to generate wealth, took home $901,000 from the union in 2023, Politico reported.
While he earns significantly more than the average dockworker as president of the union, many dockworkers earn well above the median American salary. They claim their salaries haven’t kept up with inflation, but neither have the vast majority of Americans earning much less than them.
The Daily Caller continues:
Daggett made $728,000 from the ILA last year and an additional $173,000 for being the president emeritus of ILA Local 1804-1, according to Politico. ILA members make approximately $81,000 in base salary, though some can make as much as $200,000 in a year if they are able to work many overtime hours, according to The Associated Press.
Perhaps he needs to earn more to maintain the 76 foot yacht he purchased years ago.
He’s also negotiating for a guarantee that their jobs won’t be replaced by AI, despite ironically making a case for it, as robots are capable of doing the jobs at a small fraction of the cost of human labor and don’t go on strike.
But for now, Daggett remains confident that his strike will be effective and his demands will be met.
Daggett appears to be well aware of the power he can wield by keeping 14 major ports shut down while seeking major concessions from USMX in a new contract. JPMorgan estimates that the strike could cost up to $4.5 billion per day, according to the AP, and a broad coalition of trade groups and business interests warned that a strike “would have a devastating impact on the economy” in a Sept. 17 letter to President Joe Biden.
In an interview that’s since gone viral, Americans are quickly losing any sympathy towards the strike, as he flippantly spoke about his willingness to cripple the already fragile economy, leaving grocery stores empty and putting Americans out of work.
Daggett has made headlines before, having been described by the Department of Justice (DOJ) as a mafia “associate” who ascended the union’s internal hierarchy with the help of organized crime, according to The New York Times. The DOJ has brought and lost two cases against Daggett, who described himself as a victim of mafia thuggery on the witness stand in a 2005 trial during which his mobster co-defendant vanished before being discovered dead in the trunk of a car in New Jersey.
This also highlights the importance of manufacturing, and making the United States less dependent on foreign countries for its goods — an issue that Kamala has recently added to her platform, but that Trump has been championing since 2016.
