‘They Can’t Survive Too Long’: The Union Leader Who Shut Down the Ports Is Playing Hardball

Harold J. Daggett is seeking big raises for longshoremen on the East and Gulf Coasts who have fallen behind workers on the West Coast.

Nearly two decades ago, Harold J. Daggett was accused of being part of the mob’s efforts to control a powerful union, the International Longshoremen’s Association.

He was a midlevel official of the union. After a high-profile trial, a jury acquitted him of fraud and extortion conspiracy, and he joined reveling supporters outside the Brooklyn federal courthouse. Motioning toward the building, he asked onlookers, “What doorway do I have to go through to get my reputation back?”

Now, after 13 years as the union’s president, Mr. Daggett is seeking a different type of victory.

He is leading a strike that began on Tuesday, shutting down most trade at a dozen big ports on the East and Gulf Coasts. The union, whose members move containers and other cargo on and off ships, is demanding much higher wages, improved benefits and limits on labor-saving technology.

Mr. Daggett has cast the strike as a battle against large multinational corporations that earned outsize profits during the pandemic-related supply chain chaos. He has asserted that his 47,000 members have the upper hand because their work is essential to the automakers, retailers and other businesses that depend on the ports.

“We’re going to win this thing,” Mr. Daggett, 78, said on Tuesday, along with an expletive, as members picketed outside a port terminal in New Jersey. “They can’t survive too long.”

Some labor experts say Mr. Daggett is well positioned to get a good deal. “If they stop working, the goods stop moving,” said William Brucher, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations. “They have real economic power and leverage.”

But for all the bravado on display this week, the question of reputation still hangs over Mr. Daggett.

His style is autocratic, some members say. The union has struggled to match the gains of its counterpart on the West Coast. And questions about organized crime’s influence on the I.L.A. have never been fully resolved.

The union is known for a top-down approach.

Mr. Daggett’s confrontational approach to the negotiations may be a reflection of his roots — and the union’s history.

A third-generation dockworker, he was born in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, once a power base of the I.L.A., spent his boyhood in Queens, then joined the Navy before working as mechanic on the docks and in recent years as a union official, not working on the waterfront.

The union has long been noted for its generous salaries. Mr. Daggett was paid by the international union and one of its biggest locals, in Newark, a total of more than $900,000 last year and over $7 million over the past 10 years, according to an analysis of Labor Department filings by The New York Times.

By contrast, the president of the West Coast dockworkers’ organization, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, earned just over $234,000 last year, which is more like what the leaders of large American unions like the United Automobile Workers make.

Another big difference between the two longshore unions is how they are led and structured. The I.L.A. has long had dominant presidents who hold many, if not most, of the levers of power. There is no indication that the union asked all of its members to vote to authorize a strike, a step most unions take and disclose publicly before a walkout. And some members said they had not been informed by the union about any plans for strike pay.

When West Coast longshoremen broke away from the I.L.A. in the 1930s to form their own group, they set up a more democratic culture that has helped win the support of the rank and file and make considerable gains, labor historians say.

Several I.L.A. members said in interviews that they were angry that Mr. Daggett had not secured better retirement benefits. Those workers requested anonymity because they didn’t want to openly criticize the union leader, particularly during a strike, and feared reprisals.

A union spokesman did not respond this week to emailed questions and declined recent requests for an interview with Mr. Daggett.

Gains have lagged behind those on the West Coast.

Another difference between the I.L.A. and the West Coast union is in the pay and pension benefits they have secured.

“Not always, but most of the time, the I.L.W.U. contract is better,” said John Ahlquist, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who has studied unions. “The East Coast union leaders need to show that they’re able to deliver and negotiate as well as the West Coast.”

Those at the current top wage can earn well over $100,000 a year, including overtime, and sometimes $200,000 at the Port of New York and New Jersey. But less-experienced union members make far less, and the I.L.A. has said it is determined to close that gap.

Under the I.L.A. contract that expired on Tuesday, the top wage was $39 per hour. In the West Coast contract that expired last year, longshoremen made $46.23 per hour, and in their new agreement — achieved after worker slowdowns but no strike — wages will gradually rise to $60.85 in 2027.

Mr. Daggett told CNBC on Tuesday that he was seeking a 61.5 percent raise over six years, which would put the top hourly wage above $64. The group representing port employers, the United States Maritime Alliance, has said it is offering an increase of nearly 50 percent over that period.

As for retirement benefits, West Coast longshoremen are entitled to defined-benefit pensions that provide significant, predictable payments in retirement. Some I.L.A. members have such pensions, but not all do.

A union official — Mr. Daggett’s son, Dennis A. Daggett, an executive vice president who is often mentioned as a potential successor — said last month that the I.L.A. was going to ask employers to increase what they contributed to a defined-contribution plan, which does not pay out set sums in retirement.

And then there is the question of job security, a perennial concern on both coasts. The West Coast agreement allows for “fully mechanized and robotic-operated marine terminals.” The I.L.A. contract has more restrictive language, banning equipment that is “devoid of human interaction.”

But that provision has not stopped operators at some East Coast ports from introducing large cranes that can sort containers without a human operator directing its moves.

“We will never allow automation to come into our union and try to put us out of work as long as I’m alive,” Harold Daggett has said. But he has not detailed how he would achieve that in a new contract.

Questions about organized crime have dogged the union.

In 1949, a New York Sun reporter won a Pulitzer Prize for articles about Mafia involvement and corruption at the I.L.A., inspiring the Marlon Brando movie “On the Waterfront” — along with numerous criminal cases.

In the 1950s, New York and New Jersey formed the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor with the aim of stamping out organized crime at the ports. But in recent years, the I.L.A., the companies shipping cargo and New Jersey politicians sought to abolish the commission, saying it was outmoded.

New York fought a legal battle to keep it alive, but last year the Supreme Court sided with New Jersey, allowing it to withdraw. New York set up its own waterfront commission, but the state’s ports are much smaller than the ones in New Jersey.

The decision was a blow to those who believed the mob was still a problem at the New Jersey and New York ports.

In a letter submitted to the Supreme Court in 2021, two senior F.B.I. agents, from the New York and Newark offices, said “successful federal prosecutions have revealed the continued influence of the Genovese and Gambino organized crime families over the International Longshoremen’s Association and waterfront businesses.”

Kirsten Noyes contributed research.