
How much do dockworkers make? Here are the striking workers' salaries.
CBSN
Roughly 25,000 striking dockworkers at ports along the East and Gulf Coasts of the U.S. are rallying for higher pay and stronger guardrails against their jobs being automated out of existence.
Members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), a union representing the dockworkers, walked off the job Tuesday for the first time in nearly 50 years as they push for "the kind of wages we deserve," ILA President Harold Daggett said in a social media post on Tuesday.
Those wages, union officials argue, should factor in the torrid inflation that eroded dockworkers' paychecks under their now lapsed labor contract with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), which represents ports and ocean carriers. As the industry profits, longshore workers "continue to be crippled by inflation due to USMX's unfair wage packages," the ILA said in a statement.

For nearly three agonizing years, Mariah Freschi and her husband have been trying to have a second baby. The California mother recently underwent surgery to remove her blocked fallopian tubes, leaving in vitro fertilization as her only option to get pregnant. But the cost quoted by her Sacramento-area clinic was $25,000 — out of reach for Freschi, a preschool teacher, and her husband, a warehouse worker.