 | |
| Founded | August 11, 1937 |
|---|---|
| Legal status | 501(c)(5) labor organization[1] |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, US[1] |
Membership (2020) | 29,056[2] |
President | Willie Adams |
| Subsidiaries | International Longshore & Warehouse, Pacific Longshoremen's Memorial Association[1] |
| Affiliations | |
Revenue (2014) | $7,380,493[1] |
| Expenses (2014) | $5,980,052[1] |
| Employees | 33[1] (in 2014) |
| Website | www |
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is a labor union which primarily represents dock workers on the West Coast of the United States, Hawaii, and in British Columbia, Canada; on the East Coast, the dominant union is the International Longshoremen's Association. The union was established in 1937 after the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike, a three-month-long strike that culminated in a four-day general strike in San Francisco, California, and the Bay Area. It disaffiliated from the AFL–CIO on August 30, 2013.
The union, which still uses hiring halls, has a single labor contract with the Pacific Maritime Association which covers all 29 seaports on the west coast of the US, from Bellingham, Washington, to San Diego; its 15,000 dockworkers were paid an average of $171,000 in 2019.[3][4] The union has been described as "the aristocrat of the working class" and their members "lords of the docks" for their high pay and power over a choke point of the global economy.[3][5]
- ^ a b c d e f "Form 990: Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax". International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Guidestar. December 31, 2014.
- ^ US Department of Labor, Office of Labor-Management Standards. File number 000-202. Report submitted March 31, 2021.
- ^ a b Logan, Tim; Khouri, Andrew (2015-02-17). "Small but powerful union is at center of port dispute". Los Angeles Times.
But the port workers — who still queue up at hiring halls daily for work and spend years earning full membership — stand guard over a crucial chokepoint in the global economy. For decades these "lords of the docks" have been paid like blue-collar royalty. ... The first was negotiating a single contract covering every port from San Diego to Bellingham, Wash. That prevents shippers from playing one West Coast port against another, as sometimes happens on the East Coast, said Peter Olney, a former organizing director at ILWU.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
LAT_2019-11-29was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Nolte, Carl (July 5, 2014). "When S.F. waterfront was scene of bloody riots". SFGate.
The longshore union has become the aristocrat of the working class; a top member can earn over well over $100,000 a year with excellent benefits. The jobs are so good that it's almost as tough to get in the ILWU as it is to get into Stanford; thousands apply for vacancies, sometimes tens of thousands. "These are dream blue-collar jobs," said Craig Merrilees, the union's communications director.