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<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.

One of the things that drives this for the guys doing actual longshoreman-type work (i.e., working the ships) is that they are tied to the schedules of the vessels making port calls. The marine terminal operator will staff the piers based on scheduled port calls, and these schedules are often thrown into disarray when unforeseen circumstances (weather or delays at other ports, for example) cause vessels to show up late. If you have a crew scheduled to work a ship that arrives at 6:00 AM and the ship is delayed for 12 hours, the ILA contract requires you to pay that crew for sitting around doing nothing -- and then pay another crew that comes in 12 hours later.

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.