With the port strike in the news, you may be wondering how much money unionized longshoremen really make. It turns out this is not so easy to suss out. Pacific Coast shippers are represented by the PMA, which publishes a relatively straightforward list of average annual earnings. East Coast shippers are represented by the USMX, which does no such thing. However, they do publish their master agreements, which provide contracted hourly wages on an annual basis. These can be roughly converted to annual earnings on a PMA basis, which allows a reasonable comparison.
After adjusting it all for inflation, here's my best guesstimate for an average worker with moderate seniority and around 32 hours of work per week:
A few things are obvious:
- West Coast workers earn way more than East Coast workers.
- East Coast workers average around $60,000 per year, which is OK money but hardly a king's ransom.
- Neither coast has seen much of a pay increase over the past 20 years. East Coast workers, in fact, earn less than they did in 2000. In addition, the East Coast has a tiered pay scale, with new workers earning considerably less than the average.
The ILA is asking for large wage increases on East Coast ports, but much of this will just make up for past losses plus the recent inflationary spike.
NOTE: The West Coast figures show some volatility because they're based on actual earnings. During a recession, when hours of work go down, so do earnings. The East Coast figures are extrapolated from hourly wages with an assumption of 1,600 hours of work per year. They're probably volatile too, but since we don't know actual hours worked there's no way to incorporate this. If I had to guess, I'd say that actual annual earnings show similar volatility on both coasts.
LGM suggests the strike is about more than money. https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/10/longshoremen-strike
Yes. The real issue is tech.
The US is 50 years behind the rest of the world on port technology because of labor agreements. This adds to three cost of every single product we import, not just in labor costs but also in time, damaged goods, lack of real time information on containers, etc.
This is an economic and national security issue and needs to be solved.
All I know is what NPR reported - that the strike was about introducing more automated tech. Also from LGM: "But the companies decided to introduce some additional job-stealing automation without talking to the ILA in the Mobile port and this started us down this road."
I couldn't be more on the side of employees, but introducing more productive/fewer labor hours tech is what makes us or any other "advanced" country have the standard of living we do and has been going on since around when the US was founded if you don't consider the introduction of the plow. Resisting more productive tech is pure "featherbedding" (haven't heard that term in a while). "Job killing" yet after two and half centuries of it we somehow have full employment.
It reminds me of the NYC transit worker union (I assume) keeping a second employee (the conductor) on every subway train while the rest of the world eliminated that position half a century ago.
Newer NYC subway trains have automated announcements, half the conductor's job had when they feel like doing it. With modern signaling (an updated version of what was introduced on BART and the new Victoria line in London over 50 years ago) the trains are only started by the driver after closing the doors and then the train drives itself to the next station. So drivers and conductors have way less to do and one person can do the job.
I've noticed that London has a high tech solution to the driver being able to see the people boarding/offboarding the train: a mirror at the front of the platform. An objection in NYC is that some platforms are curved, like cheap wireless screens and cameras haven't been invented.
That is of course just one example out of millions of them.
The problem in the US is that since the Reagan administration all the economic benefits of steadily increasing productivity have been going to upper and upper upper incomes and basically none to middle and lower incomes, unlike previous history.
Besides health and safety, it was mainly unions that forced capitalists to share the wealth instead of sucking it all up for themselves.
Sorry this chart does pass the smell test. There is just no way one coast gets pay twice as much as the other coast. Something is amiss. It could be that benefits are not factored in for both sides or that part-time employees are included in the East. Let’s see if someone can explain the discrepancy.
Um, possibly because more freight enters the U.S. in the West than in the East? I dunno, just spit balling here. Maybe it's because people love their ratty cheap Temu junk than they do higher priced higher quality European imports? Or maybe that just all they can afford.
Now that the Panama Canal has been widened and major East Coast ports deepened the East Coast is getting a lot more shipping from Asia.
I am not familiar with long shoreman typical work week: Kevin's analysis is based on a 32 hour work week, rather than 40 hours. If so, a West Coast long shoreman, at $160,000 per year, are highly paid relative to required skillset.
Stated differently a West Coast long shoreman earns about the same as the average pediatrician.
Here's middleoftheroaddem showing his well-known respect for the common man by saying they don't have the 'skill set' you'd associate with making that much money.
I think it’s entirely fair to compare the skill set to a pediatrician. I’ll admit I don’t know just what a long shoreman’s skill set is, but I suspect the number of people who could develop that skill set is far, far higher than the number who could become a practicing pediatrician. I’d guess that not one American in 1000 has the chops to make it thru medical school in any specialty.
How many MBA upper-management types out of 1,000 have the chops to make it through med school?
Thusfar, Kevin’s old blogging grounds hasn’t said a word on the port strike. Nor the hotel strike not long ago. Yet they name themselves after a labor movement icon …
Just wanted to note that, a long time ago, my father was an ILA member. He worked in Manhattan (when I was about seven, I watched him stand on deck using hand signals to direct the crane unloading the hold--this was over sixty years ago--and thought he had the best job in the world) and when freight shipping started to die there, we moved to NJ and he worked at Port Newark. He never took a vacation, worked absolutely brutal hours, was never rich (though some of his co-workers were convinced he was born with a million bucks under his bed because he was Jewish), and died of cancer at 61, just as he started to think about retirement. Yet, with the help of some personal loans and a little financial aid, he put me through Colgate and Cornell Law in the '70s. So my sympathy is all with the union.
What? You can make $160,000 by pushing boxes around? Why did I fuck around getting a PhD to make less than half that?
Well, according to middleoftheroaddem, you just plain foolish in your selection of skill sets.
No one with any brains gets a PhD because they want to make money.
Zing! I mean, my income wasn't bad at all during my peak earning years, but it sure wasn't anywhere near $160 k/yr. For that matter, I'm pretty sure the department head didn't make that much either.
Yeah, middleoftheroaddem's sneer that longshore men are highly paid 'relative to their skill set' really grates on me.
Knew a few long shoreman and Stevedors. They didn’t make squat though how much I do not know ( how little more like it). I’m in NY
Did Harry Bridges, a well known communist, have anything to do with the East West difference.
This is the answer. A long time ago I was an ILWU (west coast) member and working longshoreman. The union was seriously interested in our welfare and working conditions … including our safety. And we got paid a lot more than our east coast counterparts.
The ILA (east coast) union was older, and rooted in a mafia culture. Maybe things have changed, but at that time working there involved a lot of looking the other way while brazen and organized theft went on. A pit.
The book "On the Waterfront: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Articles That Inspired the Classic Film and Transformed the New York Harbor" is amazing and really paints the picture of the old longshoreman days in NYC.
I’m not THAT old!
My experience on the SF docks was In the mid-70s.
Back in the day before containers, a family member worked on the docks. From his stories, some of the pay was made up when for some reason a load of booze fell out of the net.
Then after that more fell off the back of the trucks. It was so bad in NYC that shippers would send stuff to other East Coast ports and truck or train it to NYC. This is one of the big advantages of containerized shipping - you put stuff in a big metal box at the source and it all ends up at the end destination which is past the port.
Now do the pay difference between east and west port pilot pay.
Kudos to Kevin who doesn't just do the lazy thing that most reporters do: accept the management's numbers without a single thought. Usually the management will try to push the idea that someone making $30/hour is actually pulling down over 100,000 per year.
The PMA and USMX are management.