ILA, Waterfront Commission spar at hearing

ILA, Waterfront Commission spar at hearing    A newly invigorated Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, which has been probing high salaries given to workers with what it calls 'no work/no show jobs' at the port, was blasted by Harold J. Daggett, executive vice president of the International Longshoremen's Association.
   The agency 'looks and treats us all like we are criminals. Their main focus is on harassing our members and beefing up their numbers,' Daggett said in a hearing room packed to overflowing with union members.
   Daggett harangued the commission in an opening statement, at various times calling the proceedings 'the closest thing to communism that you will see in the United States,' and complaining 'what we are experiencing here is simply McCarthyism or SS all over again.'
   Frequently mentioned as a possible successor to Richard P. Hughes, current ILA president, Daggett is also president of ILA Local 1804-1, the general maintenance local covering ILA members in the Port of New York and New Jersey. He was greeted by a crowd of union members on the street as he left the commission's offices in lower Manhattan.
   Ronald Goldstock, the New York Commissioner of the agency, said the hearings are probing jobs that 'funnel huge amounts of money to a privileged few, and, as a consequence, adversely affect the ability of the port to be competitive within the industry.'
   The hearings have focused on positions such as shop stewards and timekeepers who earn outsize salaries, sometimes more than the presidents of the locals they are employed by.
   In a summary of the hearings to date, Goldstock said, 'most of the timekeepers in the Port of New York, each with generous salaries, have organized crime family connections or are related to union officials.' Timekeepers keep track of the dockworker working hours for company payrolls. One made $464,000 per year, paid as if he works 25 hours a day, every day.
   Goldstock also said, 'the three largest stevedores in Port Newark-Elizabeth each have a shop steward who was a nephew or son-in-law of Vincent Gigante — each earning outsize salaries. Vincent 'Chin' Gigante, who died in 2005, was the boss of the Genovese crime family.
   But Daggett noted all these men have been licensed by the Waterfront Commission and have had federal oversight by a federal appointed monitor. And he argued individuals should not be tainted by the actions of their fathers or relatives. He and other union officials defended the practice of paying some stewards round-the-clock, saying that are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Some make more than $400,000 a year, and the average annual pay of 17 interviewed was $230,000.
   Goldstock said that when terminal operator executives were asked about the high salaries being paid certain workers, responses fell into four categories:
   ' They were unaware of the salaries.
   ' They were compelled by contract or 'custom and practice.'
   ' The timekeepers or shop stewards kept 'workers in line.'
   ' They were merely maintaining previous practice.
   The Waterfront Commission was established in 1953 to stop corruption on the waterfront, and is funded by a maximum 2 percent assessment on the wages of waterfront employees handling waterborne cargo. While union officials complained at the hearing that the cost of the commission was helping make the port less competitive, Goldstock said the fee to fund the commission amounts to about $4 per container and that the practices his agency is probing, such as no-show jobs, possible illicit payments, lack of diversity in the workforce, could be raising costs by $100 a container or more. ' Chris Dupin