Meet Harold Daggett, the colorful and controversial union boss leading the port strike

By Chris Isidore and Vanessa Yurkevich, CNN

New York (CNN) — A week ago, few outside the labor movement or shipping industry knew Harold Daggett, the tough-talking, colorful head of the union now on strike at ports along the East and Gulf Coasts.

That’s certainly no longer the case.

Daggett is the president of the International Longshoremen’s Association, which has nearly 50,000 union members on strike at three dozen different port facilities. The work stoppage has halted the movement of most of the containerized cargo moving into and out of the United States since early Tuesday.

This is the union’s first strike in 47 years, but Daggett participated in the previous strike as a rank-and-file dock worker. He had joined the union a decade earlier in 1967 after serving in the Navy in Vietnam.

Today, Daggett is a 78-year-old with six grandchildren and two great-grandsons. Sporting gold chains and a diamond ring, he throws out swear words in virtually every other sentence while threatening to bring the world’s economy to a standstill.

“Who’s the greedy ones here? These companies over in Europe, they don’t give a f*** about us,” he told members on the picket line after the start of the strike early Tuesday, referring to foreign-owned shipping lines on the opposing side.

“We’re going to show them, they’re going to have to give a f*** about us, because nothing is going to move without us!” he said to cheers. “We’re going to win this f***ing thing. Trust me. They can’t survive too long. We’re going to get what the f*** we deserve.”

A few hours later, he arrived back at the Port of New York and New Jersey in Elizabeth, New Jersey just after dawn, flanked by his son, ILA Executive Vice President Dennis Daggett, as well as other ILA leadership.

A sea of hundreds of union members parted amid cheers as made his way to the top of a small grassy knoll, with idle shipping containers as a backdrop. He spoke to members using both a bullhorn and colorful language.

“If we have to be out here a month or two months, this world will collapse,” Daggett said.

Unwanted attention

But increasing attention on Daggett and the strike has brought harassment and death threats, according to a statement from the union.

Daggett makes about $902,000 for positions with the ILA and one of its locals – far more than many of his counterparts. His son earns $703,000 from the ILA and the same local. At the United Auto Workers union, with more than four times as many members, UAW President Shawn Fain received just under $200,000 for his eight months on the job last year.

Daggett also has other honors most union bosses don’t enjoy. The union and several locals erected a statue of him outside of its headquarters in 2022, for example.

The ILA attributes the criticism of him to efforts to make the union cave on its demands, adding that Daggett “is sickened by these attempts to his attack his professional accomplishments as a union leader, and destroy the life he has built for him and his family.”

Still, there have been allegations of wrongdoing, including federal racketeering charges against him and other union officials in 2005, accusing Daggett and mob associates of enriching themselves through siphoning off union funds. But some of those charges were later dismissed. Daggett was acquitted of the other charges. He has denied any accusations of ties with the mob.

Political relationships

Daggett has ties to fellow Queens native former President Donald Trump, with whom he has said he has “a long relationship going back decades in New York City,” according to a July post asking ILA members to pray for the former president after an assassination attempt.

In that post, Daggett also included a picture of himself shaking hands with Trump. That photo came from a meeting at Mar-a-Lago last November, in what Daggett described as a “wonderful, productive 90-minute meeting.” He said that they talked about concerns that increased automation at the ports could cost union jobs – a key demand of the current strike.

The union has not endorsed Trump. Nor has it followed many other unions in endorsing Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, or, earlier in the campaign, President Joe Biden. The ILA did, however, endorse Biden over Trump four years ago, with Daggett touting at that time Biden’s “friendship and support of the ILA (that) goes back decades.”

Daggett on Tuesday morning also praised the efforts of Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su in trying to broker a deal ahead of the strike, even though the union had said it did not want federal mediators involved in the negotiations. And the union’s Political Action Committee has donated $115,000 to Democrats in this current election cycle compared with $5,000 to Republicans, according to data from OpenSecrets, which tracks donations.

Timing of the strike

The timing of the strike is set by the previous six-year contract, which expired on Monday night, not the US presidential election.

The union saw the recent period of record profitability for the shipping industry as its chance to win dramatic increases in pay.

Industry profits topped $400 billion from 2020 to 2023 as shipping rates soared during and after the pandemic, according to analyst John McCown. That is believed to be more than the industry made in the entire history of containerized shipping prior to that.

The union could have delayed a strike until after the election, working under an extension, but the ILA would have lost bargaining leverage by delaying any work action closer to the end of the pre-holiday shipping season. Striking now made sense for the union, no matter the political impact.

The union is seeking a $5-an-hour pay increase each of the six years of the contract being negotiated, which would raise top hourly pay 77% over the life of the contract.

When the company came back on the eve of the strike with a $3-an-hour offer that would have raised pay nearly 50%, Daggett said he responded, “Go f*** yourself.”

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