International Longshoremen’s Association Opens Wage Scale Meetings in New Jersey With 250 Wage Scale Delegates Representing Atlantic and Gulf Coast Ports Reviewing Contract Demands For New Agreement with United States Maritime Alliance
NORTH BERGEN, NJ – (September 4, 2024) Wage Scale Delegates from the International Longshoremen’s Association began Wage Scale Meetings today in Teaneck, New Jersey and reviewed Master Contract demands the union is making to United States Maritime Alliance. The current six-year Master Contract Agreement with USMX expires in 27 days.
The 250 ILA Wage Scale delegates heard a report from International President Harold J. Daggett who exposed the billion-dollar profits made in recent years by the companies who employ the majority of the union’s 85,000 members.
“The ILA proposal not only makes up for the past few years of extremely high inflation, and long-term inflation going back decades from when a $1 per hour increase was a fair raise, but the proposal also ensure the financial security of ILA members and their families through the uncertainty of the coming years,” said President Daggett.
In his report to ILA Wage Scale delegates, the ILA leader displayed record profits recorded by major shipping companies on two large screens while declaring: “You deserve a piece of this pie, my ILA Sisters and Brothers, and we are going to fight for it – together!”
ILA Executive Vice President reviewed the current Master Contract and proposal line-by-line with Wage Scale delegates with many in the negotiations going on record thanking the ILA leaders for their efforts in protecting ILA rank-and-file members with powerful contract demands.
The ILA presented Wage Scale delegates with a comprehensive history of ILA negotiations and wage progressions going back to 1974.
ILA President Daggett noted that ILA members back in 1977 went on strike for three months an 80-cents increase in wages.
“That was a tough strike,” recalled President Daggett of the last coast-wide ILA strike in 1977. He was a young longshoreman at the time and was dispatched to the Port of Long Beach, California to organize picket lines at West Coast ports to prevent diverted cargo.
“The ILA has gone out on strike before to demand dignity at work and dignity in pay, and the ILA can do the same today if USMX refuses to properly value the ILA members’ work,” President Daggett said to his current ILA members.
Tomorrow’s Wage Scale session will be devoted to presenting delegates the ILA’s Strike Mobilization Plan. President Daggett again stated that the ILA would hit the streets on Tuesday, October 1, 2024, if a new agreement with USMX is not reached by that time.
Details of the ILA’s contract demands will not be released.
