ILA President Harold Daggett
International Longshoremen Association leaders were forced to talk their membership off the
brink of a strike earlier this month that would have closed East Coast and Gulf Coast ports. It’s not often that you see a union and its membership so out of step with each other. Usually, at the very least, they try to present a united front. ILA leaders are going to have to find a way to convince their members that they are working for them so the U.S. economy isn’t faced with an actual port shut down. The last port closure occurred in 2014. West Coast ports were closed for 10 days during negotiations between employers and ILWU. The estimated cost to the U.S. economy of those closings is approximately
$1.9 billion per day.
