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

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Worst kept secret—red tape strangling Canada’s economy

Published on February 22, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

In the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S.

According to a new Statistics Canada report, government regulation has grown over the years and it’s hurting Canada’s economy. The report, which uses a regulatory burden measure devised by KPMG and Transport Canada, shows government regulatory requirements increased 2.1 per cent annually from 2006 to 2021, with the effect of reducing the business sector’s GDP, employment, labour productivity and investment.

Specifically, the growth in regulation over these years cut business-sector investment by an estimated nine per cent and “reduced business start-ups and business dynamism,” cut GDP in the business sector by 1.7 percentage points, cut employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points.

While the report only covered regulatory growth through 2021, in the past four years an avalanche of new regulations has made the already existing problem of overregulation worse.

The Trudeau government in particular has intensified its regulatory assault on the extraction sector with a greenhouse gas emissions cap, new fuel regulations and new methane emissions regulations. In the last few years, federal diktats and expansions of bureaucratic control have swept the auto industry, child care, supermarkets and many other sectors.

Again, the negative results are evident. Over the past nine years, Canada’s cumulative real growth in per-person GDP (an indicator of incomes and living standards) has been a paltry 1.7 per cent and trending downward, compared to 18.6 per cent and trending upward in the United States. Put differently, if the Canadian economy had tracked with the U.S. economy over the past nine years, average incomes in Canada would be much higher today.

Also in the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S., and only about two-thirds as much new capital (on average) as workers in other developed countries.

Consequently, Canada is mired in an economic growth crisis—a fact that even the Trudeau government does not deny. “We have more work to do,” said Anita Anand, then-president of the Treasury Board, last August, “to examine the causes of low productivity levels.” The Statistics Canada report, if nothing else, confirms what economists and the business community already knew—the regulatory burden is much of the problem.

Of course, regulation is not the only factor hurting Canada’s economy. Higher federal carbon taxes, higher payroll taxes and higher top marginal income tax rates are also weakening Canada’s productivity, GDP, business investment and entrepreneurship.

Finally, while the Statistics Canada report shows significant economic costs of regulation, the authors note that their estimate of the effect of regulatory accumulation on GDP is “much smaller” than the effect estimated in an American study published several years ago in the Review of Economic Dynamics. In other words, the negative effects of regulation in Canada may be even higher than StatsCan suggests.

Whether Statistics Canada has underestimated the economic costs of regulation or not, one thing is clear: reducing regulation and reversing the policy course of recent years would help get Canada out of its current economic rut. The country is effectively in a recession even if, as a result of rapid population growth fuelled by record levels of immigration, the GDP statistics do not meet the technical definition of a recession.

With dismal GDP and business investment numbers, a turnaround—both in policy and outcomes—can’t come quickly enough for Canadians.

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute

Business

‘Out and out fraud’: DOGE questions $2 billion Biden grant to left-wing ‘green energy’ nonprofit`

Published on February 22, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The EPA under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a ‘green energy’ group that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a “green energy” nonprofit that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists such as former Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.

Founded in 2023 as a coalition of nonprofits, corporations, unions, municipalities, and other groups, Power Forward Communities (PFC) bills itself as “the first national program to finance home energy efficiency upgrades at scale, saving Americans thousands of dollars on their utility bills every year.” It says it “will help homeowners, developers, and renters swap outdated, inefficient appliances with more efficient and modernized options, saving money for years ahead and ensuring our kids can grow up with cleaner, pollutant-free air.”

The organization’s website boasts more than 300 member organizations across 46 states but does not detail actual activities. It does have job postings for three open positions and a form for people to sign up for more information.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, along with new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, are raising questions about the $2 billion grant PFC received from the Biden EPA’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), ostensibly for the “affordable decarbonization of homes and apartments throughout the country, with a particular focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities.”

PFC’s announcement of the grant is the organization’s only press release to date and is alarming given that the organization had somehow reported only $100 in revenue at the end of 2023.

“I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word,” Zeldin said. “When we learned about the Biden administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this.” Zeldin previously announced the Biden EPA had deposited the $20 billion in a Citibank account, apparently to make it harder for the next administration to retrieve and review it.

“As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” he added. “It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

Daniel Turner, executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Beacon that in his opinion “for an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had $100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant — it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out and out fraud.”

Prominent among PFC’s insiders is Abrams, the former Georgia House minority leader best known for persistent false claims about having the state’s gubernatorial election stolen from her in 2018. Abrams founded two of PFC’s partner organizations (Southern Economic Advancement Project and Fair Count) and serves as lead counsel for a third group (Rewiring America) in the coalition. A longtime advocate of left-wing environmental policies, Abrams is also a member of the national advisory board for advocacy group Climate Power.