Leading motorcade through port, Newark mayor demands local hiring policy

After a motorcade intended to disrupt port traffic, Mayor Ras Baraka called on the agency to force ts port tenants to hire more minorities and Newark residents, akin to its airport wage policy Watch video

NEWARK -- After leading a motorcade intended to disrupt traffic at Port Newark, Mayor Ras Baraka called on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to adopt a policy mandating that the private firms who sub-let space from the agency at Port Newark hire more minorities and Newark residents.

"We are tired of everybody who comes here and makes a whole lot of money and leaves everybody else in squalor," Baraka said in an interview outside City Hall Monday afternoon, after the motorcade arrived back from the port.

Along with trying to maximizing revenues from the Port Authority for his cash-strapped city and accusing the agency of failing to do enough to curb port-related emissions, Baraka has waged a campaign to boost the number of jobs filled by Newark residents at the port, particularly in highly paid longshoremen's jobs.

The hiring issue is far from simple, however, because while the Port Authority controls the port and acts as a landlord to private terminal operators, shipping companies and other businesses that operate there, the agency is not a significant port employer itself.

Rather, longshoremen are hired by private companies under complex provisions of a collective bargaining agreement between the International Longshoremen's Association union, or ILA, and the New York Shipping Association, which represents the companies. 

The hiring process is further complicated by a statutory requirement that longshoremen pass background checks administered by another bi-state agency at the port, the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor.  

So, Baraka said the Port Authority should do for its seaport what it did for its airports: impose a policy that mandates certain employment practices as a condition of doing business at its facilities. For example, at Newark Liberty, John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia airports, employers must pay airport workers at least $10.10 an hour, and provide benefits including a paid holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. 

The Port Authrority which sought unsuccessfully to block the demonstration in court, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Port officials said it was unclear whether the demonstration had cost shippers time and money on Monday.

Other than ILA Local 1233 in Newark, which is predominantly black, Baraka harshly criticized the ILA as "racist." However, he credited the New York Shipping Association for at least meeting with him to discuss port hiring, something he said the ILA had declined to do.

The shipping association's president, John Nardi, said he could not immediately comment on Baraka's call for a hiring policy at the port. But he noted that hiring practices were already spelled out in the collective bargaining agreement between the association and the ILA.

"I really don't know the legality of it," Nardi said. "It's a legal question that would need to be explored." 

Nardi noted that there are many other, non-ILA jobs at the port, in warehousing, trucking and elsewhere along the import-export supply chain, which are not bound by union hiring rules. However, he acknowledged that those jobs tend not to pay as well as coveted longshoremen's positions, at least not at the entry level.

In any case, shipping association officials say they have progress in diversifying the port workplace in recent years.

"Since 2013, the New York Shipping Association has hired 71 residents of the city of Newark, which makes up approximately 11% of all newly hired employees and is the highest percentage of newly hired employees from any city in New Jersey, and the second highest fromall citiesin the NJ-NY-PA metropolitan region," the association's web site states. 

Before the motorcade left City Hall, the mayor's manager of port activities, Aturick Kenney, read off a list of racial and gender inequities in the ILA's ranks. For example, among the 1,587 ILA members who work at Port Newark, just 40 were African Americans, Kenney said.

Taking aim at the ILA's international president, Harold Daggett, a Sparta resident, Kenney said Daggett is paid $523,000 a year, and that the half-dozen Daggett family members who work for the union took home a total of more than $2 million last year.  

An ILA spokesman, Jim McNamara, said Daggett's pay and that of his family members was specified in the union's constitution. McNamara also rejected Baraka's characterization of the union as racist.

"Absolutely not," McNamara said. "We believe in diversity. We've always believed in diversity."

McNamara noted that the last collective bargaining agreement signed by the union contained provisions calling for minority hiring, and that progress in diversifying the port was borne out by the recent hiring figures published by the shipping association.

Monday's motorcade was made up of some two dozen cars, four yellow school buses filled with demonstrators, and a pair of city dump trucks. It made a 2-hour round trip from City Hall to the Port Newark complex, proceeding south along Corbin Street, the main port road, and into the adjacent Elizabeth Marine Terminal complex.

Citing logistical and safety concerns, the Port Authority had sought a court order to block the motorcade from taking place, and there was a highly visible Port Authority Police presence along the route that included officers in bullet-proof vests and a menacing looking military-style armored vehicle.

When Baraka was asked why the city's motorcade included the big, heavy dump trucks, he said, "We wanted to have some of our tanks. They had theirs."  

Like most Mondays, the port was busy with hundreds of trucks picking up or dropping off shipping containers from China and other export nations or bound for importers overseas. At one point, truckers halted in traffic as the motorcade passed by honked their horns in a chorus of what was either solidarity with the demonstrators' cause or frustration from the congestion.      

In addition to including the dump trucks, the demonstrators made another show of strength during remarks before the motorcade departed City Hall, where a dozen  Nation of Islam security men, known the Fruit of Islam, in trademark suits, bow ties and sunglasses, stood stone-faced on either side of the podium where the mayor and others spoke.

"They live here," Baraka said, explaining the group's presence.

A Nation of Islam minister in Newark, Jacson X, said the point was not a show of strength or militancy, bur rather of "Unity" among not only the city's African-American community, but all Newark residents.