Mr. Congeniality: Union Boss Threatens to Cripple Americans Struggling Under Bidenflation
(Surprised he wasn't canceled for "crippled," honestly.)
It’s almost like there is an election in four weeks.
“I’ll cripple you,” growled Harold Daggett, Chief Negotiator for the International Longshoremen Association and millionaire in response to not granting his union a 77% pay increase, a ban on all automation, and a percentage of the containers. Dagger himself won’t be “crippled,” he’s set for life as are his two sons, each set up with union titles and annual salaries of over half a million dollars.
The average Longshoreman’s salary is $81k (depending on overtime) — compared to the nation’s median household income of $80k. That’s a reasonable salary for work that doesn’t demand higher ed. The ILA’s demands of a 77% increase over a period of six years is far greater than what their west coast union longshoremen negotiated last year at 32% over the same period.
The other millionaire heads of ILA are also demanding a full ban on all automation, an absolutely bonkers demand seemingly pulled straight from the pages of “Atlas Shrugged.” Banning automation just kneecaps America by putting us behind every other developed nation that has automated or partially automated ports and keeps us tied to expensive human labor bosses who will turn you out during a multi-state emergency with fatalities. (The union said they will continue to handle military cargo and cruise ships, but screw you hurricane survivors looking to rebuild with materials disproportionally imported through the east coast ports.)
The Maritime Alliance perviously offered a 50% increase with limited automation but that hobo offer wasn’t good enough for the ILA bosses:
How many construction families will be affected by this? How many truckers? Rail workers? Air freight workers? Suppliers who can’t fulfill orders due to backlogged supplies? Or the average American family that isn’t don’t make a comparable annual salary and can barely afford necessities now — necessities that will be made all the more expensive if said necessities have to bypass the east by rail, air, or the CCP-controlled Panama Canal, if they arrive at all? I get the fighting spirit of the dock worker families who were promised the world by their bosses, but hopefully they realize that they aren’t the only working families out there trying to make ends meet. Not everyone has a gold-nugget adorned boss with a direct line to the movers at the DNC. Hell, not everyone has a gold nugget. Or a Bentley.
If your union leader can’t read the room and figure out that threatening to “cripple” the economy during an era of Bidenflation when broke families are struggling to pay bills while a gold-encrusted, yacht-owning millionaire spits on salaries that the other half of the country would love to make isn’t the way to go, then maybe you need a new leader. Luckily he’s installed his kids at top-level positions so folks have their choice of Daggetts.
Harold Daggett is an accidental advocate for automation.
He comes off as a pompous azz.
This guy can’t read the room. Sounds like Syndrome from The Incredibles.