Veterans left sitting by dock of bay instead of working on it

Fight Erupts Over Veteran Hiring on the New York Docks
Shipping Industry Seeks to Diversify Labor Force, but Waterfront Commission Suspects 'Subterfuge'
Wall Street Journal
By YONI BASHAN
April 25, 2014

The New York shipping industry and the agency charged with fighting corruption on the docks are clashing over a recruitment drive to bring military veterans to work in high-paying jobs in New York Harbor.

Facing pressure to root out nepotism and hire more minority dock workers, the New York Shipping Association—an umbrella group for shipping industry employers—and the docks' union, the International Longshoremen's Association, came up with a plan last year to make veterans more than half of its new hires.

Under the plan, the union and shipping association have recruited military veterans and referred them to the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, which regulates hiring at the ports, vets workers and licenses them before they are hired by individual companies.

Longshoremen are well-paid, highly coveted jobs, some of which pay between $100,000 and $200,000 a year. The union and shipping industry have been advertising the jobs, holding job fairs and using recruitment agencies, so people who weren't friends, family or acquaintances of union members had a chance to apply.

But as the veterans plan moved forward last year and this year, the Waterfront Commission discovered a trend: The union and industry were slow to refer many veterans, and some of those who were put up for licenses had close ties to union members—a breach of the spirit of diversifying the workforce.
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