It's because the job that they perform can be EXTREMELY DANGEROUS, and the likelyhood that they could suffer a serious injury, be killed on the job, or maim or kill someone else job is MUCH more likely than at your average white collar job.
You guys that think they are driving around forklifts at Long Beach and LA harbors haven't a clue. They are using 40-ton gantry cranes called spreaders to place containers into the hold and onto the deck of the ship. The containers are 20 or 40 ft wide. Guys are lowered onto the containers to put cones on them so that more containers can be stacked on a ship. Containers are stacked up to the heavens. If you make a mistake on this job you or someone you work with can lose their life.
This is the main reason they are paid "so much." I noticed none of you mention this in your "free market"-five-dollar an-hour-blue collar labor vs white collar jobs analogies.
BTW: I am a programmer and I would much rather sit on my ass in an air conditions office pounding out code for 80K a year then crawling around 25 above the hold of a cargo container on a crane for a 100K a year.
Amen to that. I'm a networking guy. When is the last time a router fell on some nerd and killed him? My dad worked in construction and every so often people (or groups of people) would DIE on the job. The risk factor most certainly should play a role in that pay, as should phyiscal exertion and discomfort. Real easy for a guy sitting in an office to call guys digging a ditch in the 100 degree heat lazy.
True, risk = reward. You got that right. The real reason some workers are higher paid than others is due to productivity. Now, before every statist on the board jumps me for using that word and unions, productivity means what you produce, not how hard you are working.
Who is getting paid more? An apple picker loading a fruit truck in the middle of the summer in Yakima, WA?
or
A longshoreman, sitting in an airconditioned crane, offloading a containership?
Who is working "harder?"
That's right! The longshoreman is moving more Chicom crap than the orchard worker is moving apples. He is getting paid more, even though the orchard worker is physically exhausted.
Education is a nice tool, but if the tool is not used properly, it makes no difference. I may have a PhD in astrophysics, but if I am a pilot for American Eagle, and fly the SAAB, I am making $16K/yr. I can be a HS grad, and if I am working at American Airlines, flying a 777, I'm making $17k/mo. Why? The 777 moves more crap than the SAAB turboprop.
I can buy an earthmover to dig ditches, but if the ditch that needs digging is only 10' long, the purchase of the earthmover is rather wasteful. Just because you spent a lot of years in education has nothing to do with what you make, other than your ability to exploit that education. There are plenty on this forum that believe their education entitles them to make more than a HS dropout. If they were liberals, we would call them elitests, but because we are FReepers, we usually avoid that nametag.
Now, the access to the job and the ability to leverage your employer also play into the scenario. Programmers had lots of leverage back in '98. Not so today. Yes, the union tilts the field toward the unskilled employee. Globalists, Pubbies, and corporate managers hate that idea. They think the only laws that are valid are those that tilt the bargaining table toward management. Incorporation laws come to mind. What would the PMA shareholders be without a "united" front to take on the pockets of the ILWU? Screwed, blued, and tattooed to the wall is my guess. They only have strength in numbers, just like their employees.
Many FReepers on this thread have said the longshoremen are not entitled to that pay, because they are "unskilled." I make less than an ILWU, but I bet 95% of those of you who believe the ILWU is overpaid would also say the same thing about me. My guess is the definition of "overpaid" is anyone who makes $1 more than you. The "advisors" to the POTUS are squeamish about the ILWU making $100k. Care to guess why? Two reasons - first, the "advisors" only approximate $100k on the gov't payroll, so we have the classic "I'm an overeducated, self-important blowhard, and you are nothing but a blue-collar stiff" dynamic at work, and the second is the ILWU probably supports Dems at the union level. In other words, "you didn't pay us protection money, so screw you." Clinton did it to Microsoft and the tobacco industry, and now this is "our" way of doing the very same thing.
One of these days, the pilots for a major airline will strike. 95% of the posters on this forum will say the very same things about them, that they do about the ILWU, or any other union for that matter. Overpaid, underworked, socialist, marxist, anti-American, Democrat sympathizing, economy trashing thugs. These things were said on FR about the AA flight attendants, and the AA pilots in their 20 minute strike which happened in the middle of the night.
It is a wonderment that FReepers want gov't to intervene to "save the economy" when the economy is not the gov'ts responsibility. These same FReepers will state that the pilot union is a bunch of thugs, yet they will never be able to point out any violence. They will call them socialists and marxists, when the overwhelming majority of pilots are Republican. They will call them anti-American, when 70% served their country in the most forward deployed manner possible, while most FReepers never served beyond watching Full Metal Jacket. Most that opine about the working conditions know nothing of how the airline contracts work.
It never fails. Mention "union" on FR and it is the same thing, over and over again. Perhaps if corporations did not try to have the Pubbies dismantle the labor laws, unions would not support the party that wants to tax the fruits of their negotiated labor.
Mabye statist Republicans can get over the politics of unions and corporations. Mabye not. Some things are just reflexive. It's easier to go through life having your talking points all layed out for you.