International Longshore and Warehouse Union
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]