‘I’ll Cripple You’

The leader of the Longshoremen says he won’t negotiate until he gets a commitment for a 77-percent raise over six years. The fallout is likely to hit smaller businesses hardest.

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Here are today’s highlights:    

• Have you tried to line up a pipeline of job candidates? Join the conversation.

• A couple of women are trying to prove that craft beer isn’t just for beer bros.

• Ami Kassar writes about finding opportunities amid the uncertainty and turbulence.

• WeTryingAgain: Adam Neumann is starting another coworking company.

SUPPLY CHAINS

Despite an offer of a 50-percent raise, the leader of the dockworkers strike is promising to shut everything down: “Harold Daggett stood in front of the closed gates at the Port of New York and New Jersey just after midnight Tuesday and delivered a battle cry to hundreds of members of his union that represents port workers from Maine to Texas. ‘We’re going to show these greedy bastards you can’t survive without us!’ Daggett shouted to cheers from the crowd in a speech filled with profanities and warnings about the threats automation poses to workers.”

• “‘People are going to sit up and realize how important longshoremen jobs are,’ Daggett said in an interview at the rally. ‘They won’t be able to sell cars. They won’t be able to stock malls. They won’t be able to do anything in this country without my f—ing people. And it’s about time they start realizing it.’”

• “Almost everything Americans eat, wear, and use, from T-shirts to food to sofas and vehicles, is imported via containership. About 60 percent of containerized trade moves through the East Coast and Gulf Coast ports where Daggett’s dockworkers last year unloaded about $588 billion of imports, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.”

• “Daggett has made wage demands a precondition to open contract talks on other thorny issues such as the use of automation on the docks. He is gunning for a 77-percent pay increase over six years, which would raise the base hourly rate for dockworkers to $69 from $39. Port employers and ocean shipping companies initially offered almost 40 percent. Under pressure from the White House on Monday, they increased their offer to 50 percent.”

• “Daggett has warned that if the Biden administration invokes a federal law to force workers back to the docks, his workers will deliberately slow operations. ‘In today’s world, I’ll cripple you,’ he said.” READ MORE