Labor Watch
History Lessons from the Port Strike
The ILA and Harold Daggett have brought back one of the real dark sides of union power.
Port of Charleston, SC. Credit: Mariusz Bugno. License: Shutterstock.
Harold Daggett, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) that struck ports from the Gulf Coast to Maine, said that he would teach Americans “what a strike is,” employing extortionate tactics based on ILA members’ position at a choke point of the supply chain to “cripple” the American economy and get otherwise-impossible demands fulfilled.
This was just as his predecessors in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) did in 1946. And as his predecessors in the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Association (PATCO) did in 1981. And like his predecessors, he discovered that extortionate unionism has never been accepted by the American people, regardless of political party or general acceptance of collective bargaining, and so he had to effectively self-impose a cooling-off period to conduct more negotiations until January, in exchange for a wage increase lower than the one he demanded even to come to the table before the walkout.
Read the rest of the article here (paywall).
This article first appeared in the National Review on October 17, 2024.
