NEW YORK — A looming dockworkers’ strike threatens to shut down East Coast ports and cripple the national economy just before the election. Crippling the economy isn’t just a byproduct of a dockworkers’ strike — it’s the goal, according to the key leader of the union threatening the disruption.
The decision to strike rests largely in the hands of the longshoremen’s union’s erratic and hardline leader, Harold Daggett, a New York native accused of Mafia ties. He has recently been critical of the Biden administration’s labor record and provocatively asked where the president stands for his members.
In a video post promising to hurt the economy if the union’s demands weren’t met, Daggett foresaw what would happen if his workers were forced out: The first week, the strike will dominate headlines. The second week, car dealerships will start laying off workers. In week three, shopping malls will start closing. Soon, construction workers will lose their jobs.
“In today’s world, I will paralyze you,” he said in a recent video post. “I will paralyze you.”
It’s unlikely the damage to the economy will be as rapid or severe as he imagines, but Daggett isn’t playing games.
Daggett has been president of the International Longshoremen’s Association, which represents the tens of thousands of workers who load and unload cargo at ports along the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, for more than a decade.
The union’s constitution allows Daggett to call a strike without a vote by his members. He has promised one if the union’s demands aren’t met when a six-year master contract with the shipping industry expires at the end of September.
Daggett has rarely given public interviews, and he declined to be interviewed for this article. The ILA prefers to spread its message in friendly forums, including Facebook posts and YouTube videos.
A strike now seems increasingly likely, and a major supply chain disruption could throw a spanner in the works for Vice President Kamala Harris’s bright economic message. The strike could be thrust into the presidential campaign trail almost immediately, since it would begin on the same day as Tuesday’s vice presidential debate.
While President Joe Biden calls himself the most pro-union president in history, Daggett — like the Teamsters leader who’s been a headache for Democrats — doesn’t seem to be buying it.
According to the ILA leader’s biography, Daggett is a third-generation member of the union. He was born in New York and lives in New Jersey, the two states that together are home to the largest cargo port on the East Coast. He rose through the ranks of the powerful New Jersey local, 1804-1, and in 2011 became head of the entire ILA.
A less positive version of events, found in court documents filed over the years by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, alleges that Daggett rose through the ranks of the union in part through his Mafia ties.
During the pandemic, Daggett’s workers kept going while many others stayed home. Shipping companies also made huge money, raking in record profits and handing out huge management bonuses. But in Daggett’s eyes, his workers never got their share of that pie.
Now he wants a contract that guarantees his members big pay rises and a ban on robots taking dock workers’ jobs.
Some figures, provided by industry sources, suggest Daggett is asking for nearly an 80 percent pay rise over the next six years. The union rejects that, but has released figures suggesting the figure is closer to 60 percent.
Anyone who is surprised has not been paying attention. More than a decade ago, Daggett said he wished everyone who worked at the docks could earn $400,000.
Though the industry is small — shrunk by generations of automation — it is powerful in part because the union represents workers at a pinch in international trade. The jobs remain highly sought after and quite lucrative for workers.
More than 600 longshoremen in New York and New Jersey earned more than a quarter of a million dollars in 2020, according to the latest available data from an agency that operates in both states and oversees the port.
Daggett, a union official, is also doing well. He received $728,000 from the ILA last year, plus another $173,000 as president emeritus from 1804-1, according to union filings with the Department of Labor. (By comparison, the heads of the AFL-CIO, Teamsters and autoworkers unions all make less than $300,000 a year, though the heads of the major league actors’ and players’ unions make more than $1 million.)
The United States Maritime Alliance, which negotiates on behalf of the port industry, has accused Daggett’s team of failing to come to the table. The ILA, for its part, said in a statement that is misleading and of which there have been “multiple communications” in recent weeks, but that the industry is offering an “unacceptable” pay package.
Recently, Daggett appears to be increasingly distancing himself from people seen as his allies, including Democrats in the White House and in key port states.
He publicly criticized Biden, failed to ask his ally, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, for help in preventing a strike and criticized a deal to avert a strike reached last year by the union representing West Coast dockworkers.
Daggett’s bluff is on full display when he speaks out against automation. The ILA generally defines automation as any technology that would replace the work of a human worker.
“Somebody needs to get in Congress and say, ‘Wow, time out, this world is moving too fast for us, machines need to stop,’” Daggett told an interviewee in a recent friendly interview. “Yes, we’re taking bright kids out of MIT and all these places. Yes, they’re all brilliant, but what good does it do if you put people out of work? Who’s going to support their families, machines? Machines don’t have families.”
Daggett recently expressed deep disappointment in Biden over the way the president helped avert a West Coast strike last year. Biden sent officials to broker a deal that included 32 percent wage increases for longshoremen there, but Daggett said that didn’t provide enough protection against automation.
“Where’s the president of the United States? He ain’t fighting for us,” Daggett said in a recent video. “In L.A. he told the union, hurry up and get a contract. That’s the mentality they got. They don’t even know what they’re doing today. Well, I know what I’m doing, I’m gonna save everybody’s jobs.”
While that’s not necessarily the agreed-upon version of events — the West Coast union has praised Biden’s tenure and endorsed Harris — it’s important to hear Daggett’s perspective on the episode. Not long ago, the West Coast union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, was considered the most strike-prone. Daggett’s comments suggest that that appears to have suddenly changed.
The last time a White House used the strike-prevention powers given to presidents by the Taft-Hartley Act was in 2002, when President George W. Bush used the law to break a deadlock over West Coast dockworkers, citing the risk to the military buildup ahead of the Iraq War. (On Wednesday, the ILA pledged to keep hauling military cargo even if it went on strike.)
In contrast, East Coast dockworkers have not been on strike since 1977.
Perhaps that’s why few thought Daggett’s strike threat was real until recently, even though he’s been signaling his tough stance for months. In a July 2023 speech to a large gathering of ILA members, Daggett warned shipping giant Maersk to cut a deal or else.
“Wake up, world,” he said. “I have a message for Copenhagen, which is the home of Maersk: don’t interfere with the maritime unions around the world. We’ll shut you down!”
However, Maersk’s CEO said in early August that a strike was “very unlikely.” That quickly changed. The company announced this week that it plans to charge higher prices for shipping cargo in and out of East Coast ports in light of the potential strike.
Others see more than just a good deal for his members, including legacy and dynasty-building. Daggett’s son, Dennis Daggett, is now the head of the powerful New Jersey local his father once led and the ILA’s executive vice president.
A maritime insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a delicate situation, said the current dynamic has to do in part with Harold Daggett’s desire to have his son replace him as head of the union. The better the new contract, the more likely that will happen.
The Biden administration has never used Taft-Hartley and has no plans to do so. That alone is a major victory for the ILA, because threatening to invoke Taft-Hartley would diminish Daggett’s influence.
If Daggett is grateful, he hasn’t shown it.
In a recent video, he criticized Biden’s response to the Baltimore Bridge collapse. Daggett described a conversation he had with Biden about the bridge and accused the president of not doing enough to ensure the longshoremen were kept intact. “I never got any help from the government,” Daggett said.
The White House and the office of Maryland Governor Wes Moore both rejected this version of events.
“The President is proud of his support for longshoremen,” Biden spokeswoman Robyn Patterson said in a statement. “That’s why he mobilized a whole-of-government response to quickly reopen the Port of Baltimore so workers could get back to work after the Key Bridge collapse, and why he worked closely with state and local partners to ensure impacted workers received the benefits and assistance they needed.”
Carter Elliott, a spokesman for Moore, a Democrat, pointed to the partnership with a local union and temporary relief efforts that “provided more than $13 million in direct financial assistance to more than 3,300 temporarily displaced dockworkers.”
During his rise to power, Daggett was dogged by allegations that he profited from mob support in various ways. Two decades ago, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn accused him of profiting from a mob conspiracy to elect him head of the ILA, which he was not at the time. He was acquitted.
During the trial, Daggett denied wrongdoing and said he had risen through the ranks with the support of workers. Daggett testified that a hitman cooperating with the government in the case had put a gun to his head years earlier because Daggett was planning to move the union from Manhattan to New Jersey, where many of its members worked. They also relied on a key witness—the hitman who co-founded the Jets gang and was clinically deaf and could only read lips—who the jury found unbelievable.
One of the co-defendants in the case went missing during the trial and was later found dead in the trunk of a car outside a New Jersey restaurant. He was also acquitted, but had died.
Yet even after that case collapsed, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn continued to describe Daggett as “an associate of the Genovese family” in a separate but related racketeering case that has been in court for nearly a decade.
In the years since, Daggett and the ILA have pressured New Jersey to disband a bi-state police agency that was supposed to keep the union and the Mafia in check.
