Posted on 09/26/2018 5:23:06 PM PDT by Coleus
ON THE WATERFRONT, there’s a longshoreman on the books who washes trucks.
He gets paid $465,981 a year. To wash trucks.
Fired when his bosses discovered he wasn’t actually showing up when he claimed to be working, he nevertheless regained his job—after an arbitrator concluded it was not unusual in the industry for employees to be paid “without being expected to work all the hours for which they are being paid.”
The Port of New York Harbor is the busiest on the East Coast and the third largest in the nation. From the marine terminals in Port Newark and Port Elizabeth—where hulking gantry cranes that wait to load and unload ships from all over the world stand sentinel—to the terminals in Bayonne, Staten Island and Brooklyn, more than 6.7 million cargo containers came through the sprawling seaport last year. Ships carrying everything from food and clothes to furniture, machinery and coffee make port every day.
But labor costs here are the highest in the nation, making consumer goods more expensive and the port less competitive, officials say.
Part of the reason for those high labor costs, claim waterfront regulators and federal prosecutors, include $117 million in lucrative pay packages that go to more than 400 longshoremen in New Jersey and New York, some of whom are never, ever officially off the clock, every day of the year.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Where do I sign up?
If you apply, you had better hope somebody doesn’t accuse you of some heinous acts from 30 years ago.
After all, a Job like that sounds like a Lifetime appointment.
How was this salary determined? Get rid of all of them.
Me too.
Who needs to be a Supreme Court Justice with a gig like that? Probably pays better too.
Ya— good one post 3.
I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let’s face it
Wait, whut?!
“....after an arbitrator ...”
It is also not unusual for “Arbitrators” to be bought and paid for like condoms and two bit whores.
<he nevertheless regained his job—after an arbitrator concluded it was not unusual in the industry for employees to be paid “without being expected to work all the hours for which they are being paid.”<
I have a life long buddy who works the Seattle waterfront. He’s bragged about this many times over the years. He’s a big fan of Patty Murray. So are most other Seattle longshoremen. My buddy really hates Trump. I have fun just listening quietly as he bloviates.
1. The terminals at the Port of NY/NJ had tens of thousands of workers years ago. The International Longshoreman's Association (ILA) was one of the most powerful unions in the country at the time. At its peak, the ILA had more than 30,000 workers at the piers in NY/NJ.
2. Starting around the 1970s, the Port began looking to impose layoffs to reduce costs and make NY/NJ more competitive with other East Coast ports that were starting to draw market share down south to Baltimore, Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah, etc.
3. After a protracted labor battle the two sides came to an interesting agreement. The ILA agreed to reduce the on-site workforce dramatically, with a plan in place to reduce it even further through attrition. The Port agreed to a small number of actual layoffs, and agreed to keep paying wages to many of the ILA workers who were removed from the on-site workforce but kept on the payroll. These ILA members basically got paid to stay home.
4. The Port actually saved a pile of money almost immediately, even though they were paying thousands of workers not to work. The elimination of on-site staff resulted in a dramatic reduction of theft on the piers that more than offset the wages paid to non-working ILA members.
5. Today there are fewer than 3,000 ILA members left at the Port of NY/NJ. The marine terminals are highly automated, and the biggest problem they now face is getting enough skilled workers to fill some of the positions on the piers.
Go figure. Everything is a racket these days, it seems.
So the Port figures it's just easier to work with smaller crews and pay them to be "on call" 24 hours per day -- even though they'll never actually work 24 hours straight. In the example I used above, the crew that was scheduled to work the 6:00 AM ship doesn't come to work at 6:00 if the ship is late. They can do whatever they want for that day, but they have to show up 12 hours later and work the ship at 6:00 PM. Yes, it seems wasteful -- but it's actually cheaper to have one crew of 100 longshoremen getting paid 24 hours/day than to have three crews of 300 longshoremen (total) who get paid for 8 hours/day regardless of whether their work schedules coincide with the ship arrivals.
The other thing about these contracts is that they negotiate pay rates by the ship, not by the hour. So you may be in the crew that shows up at 6:00 PM to work a ship that is scheduled to take 8 hours to unload. You're going to get paid for those 8 hours even if you get the job done in 6, so you have a nice incentive to work as efficiently as possible. The longshoremen love it because they get paid 8 hours for a 6-hour day. The shipping lines love it because it gets their ships in and out faster than they would otherwise. The Port loves it because their customers (the shipping lines) and their workers are ALL happy.
I’ll not wash trucks for half as much.
Thanks for the information. I had no idea as to how and why the longshoremen spend so much time not working and getting paid for it. My buddy just chortled about this arrangement. He did tell me he works for 6 hours a day and gets paid for 8.
Your explaining the realities of the waterfront was something I wasn’t aware of. But your explanation makes a lot of sense.
Take care and keep guys like me on course, so to speak.
I’d rather see a Governor who tells the unions at the ports to go jump in the brink. It’s common in the industry to be paid half a million for not showing up for your job, is not an excuse the taxpayers should accept on any day of the week. It’s stealing.
Good deal to have The Don at your back.
Go figure. Everything is a racket these days, it seems. >>>
thanks for the info. and yes, that for sure.
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