Most blue-collar workers along the chain have seen their wages slashed with the quick rise of global trade. But the longshoremen who move the goods the shortest distance, between ship and shore, have shrewdly protected pay that trumps that of many white-collar managers.
About half of West Coast union longshoremen make more than $100,000 a year — some much more, according to shipping industry data. More than half of foremen and managers earn more than $200,000 each year. A few bosses make more than $300,000. All get free healthcare.
Longshoreman pay dwarfs that of almost all other transit employees, such as trucking, railroad or airline workers. At massive warehouse complexes in the Inland Empire, just an hour’s drive from the ports, goods for the nation’s largest retailers are shuttled around by temporary workers making as little as $10 or $11 an hour, with no benefits or job security.
The unique clout of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union came into sharp relief recently with the partial shutdown of 29 West Coast ports. The crisis passed with a contract deal a week ago, but it will take up to three months to clear the backlog of cargo on the docks and ships stranded offshore. Many businesses and workers won’t recover the money they lost because of port gridlock.
Union spokesman Craig Merrilees said the shipping companies’ pay figures fail to account for the more than 8,000 so-called casual workers — part-timers who don’t receive benefits and often work for years to become registered union members. The data, released by the Pacific Maritime Assn., reflects 90% of the “registered” union members, or more than 12,000 workers.
The association declined a Times request for similar pay data for casual workers and about 1,100 lower-tier union members.
“They don’t want to talk about the other workers,” Merrilees said. “I don’t think it’s responsible.”
How the Pacific longshoremen have weathered forces that have crippled many unions is a tale of foresight, geography and technology.
A deal cut by union leaders half a century ago allowed workers to share in the gains from innovations in efficiency, such as modern shipping containers. Another key move: organizing all West Coast ports in the 1930s under a single contract, which prevents shipping companies from pitting workers at neighboring ports against one another.
More recently, longshoremen benefited from the rise of U.S. trade with other Pacific Rim countries, positioning the ports as a strategic nexus, another key leverage point in wage talks.
“So many labor unions don’t have that power anymore,” said Ruth Milkman, a professor specializing in labor movements at City University of New York. “Here’s a place where globalization has benefited the union, whereas the opposite is true in manufacturing.”
Since 1980, container traffic through West Coast ports has grown more than sixfold, according to the most recent data from the American Assn. of Port Authorities. Pacific ports now handle 52% of U.S. cargo volume, compared with 41% at East Coast ports.
Unlike factories, ports can’t be moved to low-wage countries. The jobs are “impervious to outsourcing,” said John Ahlquist, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied port unions worldwide.
