The Path Forward: What Can Be Done?

Therefore, the following actions must be taken:

1. Strengthening Labor Laws – Addressing gaps that permit employers to ignore the worker classification issue and use automation with no restrictions.
2. Policing of Worker Rights – Guaranteeing that corporations suffer for the violation of labor laws.
3. Promoting Employees’ Rights – Strengthening the rights of employees who wish to join a union, engage in a strike and negotiate for improved terms of employment.
4. Investing in Workforce Development – Offering courses to equip the workers in anticipation of change in the trend within the industry.
5. Public Awareness and Consumer Pressure – Informing the public about the plight of port workers and urging them to buy from companies that respect the rights of workers.

Unfortunately, the future of America ports cannot be left in the hands of corporate America avarice. People used to struggle throughout several generations to gain their rights and it is up to the policy makers, trade unions and citizens themselves not to reverse the process.

How Workers, Consumers, and Activists Can Support the Fight for Fair Treatment in America’s Ports

That is why the struggle for better wages, better working conditions, and better jobs in the American ports is not just the struggle of longshoremen, harbor workers and port truck drivers but struggle of workers across the country. Business entities have always depended on ignorance on the part of the public in order to perpetrate their vice. But, consumers, workers, and activists always have the ability to bring about genuine reform in terms of product and policy.

What Workers Can Do: Organizing and Advocacy

For longshoremen, port truck drivers and other employees who are mostly exploited in the logistics industry, unity and unionization is the best weapon against employers. Many struggles have been achieved by the unions, however, the battle is still ongoing. Here is the way to go to ensure that workers continue demanding for better conditions:

Join or Strengthen a Union

• If you are a worker in the port industries, you should consider enlisting in a union such as the ILWU, ILA or the Teamsters so as to have bargaining power.
• If your workplace is not yet covered by a union, organizing with other employees is the initial process towards improving wages and employee rights.
• Inform fellow workers on their rights and explain to them how they can pressure companies into providing reasonable working contracts.

Participate in Strikes and Protests

• The employees also have the right to go on a strike and complain of injustice because the collective action has been effective in the past.
• Support all union-organized protests and do not patronize businesses that are on strike.
• Headline: Social media campaigns should be used to publicize labour issues so as to attract the attention of the nation.

Know Your Rights and Demand Enforcement

• Employers neglect wage laws, safety regulations and working classification rules in a way that employees will not dare to complain.
• Report cases of wage theft, safety hazards, and other forms of violation of labor laws and union busting to the labor boards and unions.
• Propose that more should be done to protect jobs especially with increasing mechanisation.