Business
Some dockworkers earn more than $400,000 a year
From The Center Square
Some longshoreman regularly earn more than the president of the United States along with most other U.S. workers.
Under the existing contract with the East Coast union, a top-scale longshoreman could earn up to $39 an hour, which translates to about $81,000 a year. However, many workers take overtime and extra shifts that have higher rates.
Some 50,000 International Longshoremen’s Association members went on strike Tuesday against the East and Gulf Coast ports, hampering the flow of goods in what some predict could be the most disruptive strike in decades.
Dockworkers often earn more than $100,000 a year because of work rules and overtime requirements.
More than half of 3,726 dockworkers at the Port of New York and New Jersey earned more than $150,000 in the fiscal year that ended in 2020, according to the port’s regulator, the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor. About one in five dockworkers at the port earned more than $250,000 that year.
Eighteen dockworkers brought in more than $450,000 that year – more than the annual salary as the U.S. President ($400,000) and more than most U.S. workers. The real median household income for all Americans was $74,580 in 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Some dockworkers get paid even if they don’t work.
“Every terminal within the Port still has special compensation packages given to certain ILA longshore workers, the majority of whom are white males connected to organized crime figures or union leadership,” according to the Commission’s 2019-2020 annual report. “Based on the industry’s reported figures, the Commission has again identified over 590 individuals who collectively received over $147.6 million dollars last year in outsized salaries, or for hours they never worked.”
The report noted the special packages were not memorialized in the applicable collective bargaining agreements. Rather than eliminate or cap them, the NYSA and ILA negotiated a 2013 Memorandum of Settlement of Local Conditions in the Port of New York-New Jersey. That guarantees special packages to certain people. Those individuals are paid for hours not worked or hours worked by others, as long as they are at the Port for 40 hours each week, according to the Commission’s report.
Such conditions have endured for decades, according to the Commission’s report.
“The hearings revealed that the hiring, training and promotion practices of the industry led to low-show jobs, favoritism and nepotism, the abusive and illogical interpretation of collective bargaining agreements, and the impact of those practices both on the competitiveness of the Port and on the morale and career prospects of decent, hard-working Port employees,” according to the report. “Connected individuals are awarded high paying, low-show or no-work special compensation packages, in some cases earning salaries in excess of $500,000. Such positions were overwhelmingly given to white males connected to organized crime figures or union leadership.”
The ongoing strike, which extends from Maine to Texas, could affect everything from bananas to European beer and automobiles.
The International Longshoremen’s Association blamed the United States Maritime Alliance for refusing a contract offer.
It’s the first strike at these ports since 1977. The strike will affect 36 U.S. ports handling about half of U.S. ocean imports. Included are Boston, New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia.
Negotiations have been tense since June. The disagreement is between the International Longshore Association and Warehouse Union, which represents port workers across the country, and the U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents terminal operators and ocean carriers.
Wages of East and Gulf coast workers are a base wage of $39 an hour after six years. The union is asking for a 77% pay increase over six years. It is also asking for more restrictions and bans on the automation of cranes, gates, and container movements used to load or unload cargo.
Brett Rowland
Investigative Reporter
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
A resurfaced 2018 video from a Minneapolis-area TV station shows how Somali scammers allegedly bilked Minnesota out of millions of dollars for services that they never provided.
Independent journalist Nick Shirley touched off a storm on social media Friday after he posted a photo of one day-care center, which displayed a banner calling it “The Greater Learing Center” on X, along with a 42-minute video that went viral showing him visiting that and other day-care centers. The surveillance video, which aired on Fox 9 in 2018 after being taken in 2015, showed parents taking kids into the center, then leaving with them minutes later, according to Fox News.
“They were billing too much, they went up to high,” Hennepin County attorney Mike Freeman told Fox 9 in 2018. “It’s hard to imagine they were serving that many people. Frankly if you’re going to cheat, cheat little, because if you cheat big, you’re going to get caught.”
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Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was accused of engaging in “systemic” retaliation against whistleblowers in a Nov. 30 statement by state employees. Assistant United States Attorney Joe Thompson announced on Dec. 18 that the amount of suspected fraud in Minnesota’s Medicaid program had reached over $9 billion.
After Shirley’s video went viral, FBI Director Kash Patel announced the agency was already sending additional resources in a Sunday post on X, citing the case surrounding Feeding Our Future, which at one point accused the Minnesota government of racism during litigation over the suspension of funds after earlier allegations of fraud.
KSTP reported that the Quality Learning Center, one of the centers visited by Shirley, had 95 citations for violations from one Minnesota agency between 2019 to 2023.
President Donald Trump announced in a Nov. 21 post on Truth Social that he would end “Temporary Protected Status” for Somalis in the state in response to allegations of welfare fraud and said that the influx of refugees had “destroyed our country.”
Business
Disclosures reveal Minnesota politician’s husband’s companies surged thousands-fold amid Somali fraud crisis
Rep. Ilhan Omar’s latest financial disclosures reveal seemingly sudden wealth accumulation inside her household, even as Minnesota grapples with revelations of massive fraud that may have siphoned more than $9 billion from government programs. The numbers, drawn from publicly filed congressional reports, show two companies tied to Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett, surging in value at a pace that raises more questions than answers.
According to the filings, Rose Lake Capital LLC — a business advisory firm Mynett co-founded in 2022 — jumped from an assessed range of $1 to $1,000 in 2023 to between $5 million and $25 million in 2024. Even using the most conservative assumptions allowed under Congress’ broad valuation ranges, the company’s value would have increased thousands of times in a single year. The firm advertises itself as a facilitator of “deal-making, mergers and acquisitions, banking, politics and diplomacy.”
Archived versions of Rose Lake’s website once showcased an eye-catching lineup of political heavyweights: former Ambassador to Bahrain Adam Ereli, former Sen. Max Baucus, and prominent Democratic National Committee alumni William Derrough and Alex Hoffman. But as scrutiny surrounding Omar intensifies — particularly over whether her political network intersected with sprawling fraud schemes exposed in Minnesota — the company has quietly scrubbed its online footprint. Names and biographies of team members have vanished, and the firm has not clarified whether these figures remain involved. Omar’s office offered no comment when asked to explain the company’s sudden growth or the removal of its personnel listings.
Mynett, Omar’s third husband, has long been a controversial presence in her political orbit, but the dramatic swell in his business holdings comes at a moment when trust in Minnesota’s oversight systems is already badly shaken. Federal and state investigators now estimate that fraud involving pandemic-era and nonprofit programs may exceed $9 billion, a staggering figure for a state often held up as a model of progressive governance. For many residents, the revelation that Omar’s household wealth soared during the same period only deepens skepticism about who benefited from Minnesota’s expansive social-spending apparatus.
The financial story doesn’t stop with Rose Lake. A second Mynett-linked entity, ESTCRU LLC — a boutique winery registered in Santa Rosa, California — reported an assessed value of $1 million to $5 million in 2024. Just a year earlier, Omar disclosed its worth at $15,000 to $50,000. Despite the dramatic valuation spike, ESTCRU’s online storefront does not appear to function, its last social media activity dates back to early 2023, and the phone number listed on its website is no longer in service. As with Rose Lake, Omar’s office declined to comment on the winery’s sudden rise in reported value.
The House clerk has yet to release 2025 disclosures, leaving unanswered how these companies are performing today — and how such explosive growth materialized in the first place.
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