# How Longshoremen Get Paid: A $39 Base Wage, a $243,000 Average, and Four Devices That Explain the Gap

Full-time West Coast dockworkers averaged $243,000 in 2024 while the contract base wage topped out near $39 an hour. Hours guarantees, a cargo royalty, a closed register, and automation bans explain the rest.

Author: J.A. Watte
Published: July 20, 2026
Source: https://jwatte.com/blog/how-longshoremen-are-paid/

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*Sixth in a series on jobs whose pay system is stranger than the salary. Earlier entries covered [airline pilots](/blog/how-airline-pilots-are-paid/), [railroad crews](/blog/how-railroad-workers-are-paid/), [harbor pilots](/blog/how-harbor-pilots-are-paid/), [auto workers](/blog/how-auto-workers-are-paid/), and [union tradesmen](/blog/how-union-tradesmen-are-paid/). Longshoremen belong next to the harbor pilots, because both jobs live on the same dock and both multiply their pay with a scarcity rule rather than a wage. Every figure below is cited to a union release, a federal filing of the contract, an employer association, or a wage table, and where a number could not be verified at a primary source I say so instead of estimating.*

The headline wage is the least interesting thing about how a longshoreman is paid.

The base rate is built to sound ordinary. The East and Gulf Coast scale that just expired topped out at $39 an hour. On the West Coast the basic first-shift rate in mid-2021 was $46.23, and the top-skilled first-shift rate was $52.03. Those are respectable industrial wages and nothing more. If you annualized the old $39 top rate at 2,080 hours you would get about $81,120, which is my arithmetic and not a real paycheck, because almost nobody working these contracts is paid on that math.

Now here is the number the wage does not explain. In 2024, according to the Pacific Maritime Association, full-time registered West Coast workers averaged $243,000. Longshore workers averaged $236,000, marine clerks $264,000, and foremen $373,000. That is a wage in the fifties an hour producing an average deep into six figures, and the reason is not overtime alone.

Four structural devices, not the wage, explain the gap. Hours paid deliberately exceed hours worked. A cargo royalty pays a closed pool of workers regardless of hours. Entry is rationed by a register, so the labor supply is engineered to stay scarce. And the contracts fight the automation that would otherwise erode the work. Take them one at a time.

## The average, against the wage that supposedly produces it

Two very different sources describe West Coast earnings, and they agree on the shape.

The employer association publishes the current picture. Keep in mind who is publishing it, because the Pacific Maritime Association is the carriers' and terminals' bargaining group and its compensation figures are primary but advocacy-adjacent, framed to make a point in negotiations.

| West Coast classification | 2024 average earnings |
|---|---|
| Longshore workers | $236,000 |
| Marine clerks | $264,000 |
| Foremen | $373,000 |
| Full-time registered, all | $243,000 |

The association also circulates a separate headline "Average Annual Earnings" number of $254,000, which is a wider average than the $243,000 full-time figure. Both come from the same interested party, so treat the pair as PMA's framing rather than a neutral audit.

An independent compensation study, commissioned by the same association from an economist, ran the numbers a few years earlier and landed in the same territory:

| Classification | 2021 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|
| Class A longshoremen | $194,340 | $197,514 |
| Marine clerks | $217,699 | $220,014 |
| Foremen | $311,656 | $306,291 |

So the earnings are real, documented, and roughly four to seven times the base wage annualized honestly. The wage is not lying. It is just not doing the work.

## Device one: you are paid for more hours than you work

The single most important sentence in the West Coast compensation study is the one that explains everything else. In its words, the contract "often requires that ILWU workers be paid for significantly more hours than they actually work," and there is "a Pay Guarantee Program under which workers may be paid when there is no work available. For these and other reasons, the number of hours paid can significantly exceed the number of hours worked."

Read that twice. There is a shift structure that pays you for a full shift once it starts, whether or not the cargo keeps you busy for all of it. And there is a program that pays registered workers when there is no ship at all. On a salaried job, hours worked and hours paid are the same number by definition. Here they are two different numbers, and the second one is larger by design. That is how a wage in the fifties an hour becomes an average of $243,000. You are not being paid a secret higher rate. You are being paid the posted rate across more hours than the pier actually generated.

This is the same trick, inverted, that runs through the rest of this series. Airline pilots get paid on credit hours that can exceed hours flown. The longshore version is blunter and it is written into a guarantee.

## Device two: a tax on cargo, paid to a closed pool

The second device has no equivalent in an ordinary job. It is called the container royalty.

When containerization arrived it destroyed jobs, because a crane and a box replaced a gang unloading loose cargo by hand. The union's answer was to tax the box. Carriers pay an assessment based on the weight of the cargo that crosses the dock, and that money flows into a fund that distributes it to registered workers regardless of how many hours any individual put in. On the East and Gulf Coast that money runs through the Container Royalty Central Collection Fund, which describes itself as serving qualified ILA members and processing the manifest, voyage, vessel, container, and tonnage data each carrier reports.

The distribution formula in the last fully documented East and Gulf Coast settlement is worth understanding, because it shows who the structure is built to protect. Carriers owe tonnage assessments. Above their basic contractual obligation, the union's share is a fixed lump sum that rises over the contract, first $15 million in 2018 to 2019, climbing to $19 million in 2023 to 2024, plus 50 percent of everything left over. If in some year there is no excess, the shares are zero. So the floor is a guaranteed union-wide sum in the tens of millions, and the upside is split with the carriers. It is a per-ton levy on trade, converted into a lump the union splits among a closed group.

When the new East and Gulf Coast contract was ratified in early 2025, the union's own release listed, alongside the wage increase, "full container royalty funds returned to the ILA." I could not read the new contract's royalty language at a primary source, so I am describing the mechanism from the immediately prior settlement filed with the federal regulator and reporting the union's characterization of the new one, not asserting new dollar figures.

And here is the honest limit of what I can prove. A per-worker container-royalty payout is frequently quoted, often on the order of fifteen thousand dollars or more per registrant per year. I could not verify that individual figure at a primary plan document. The formula is verified. The check to one worker is not, so I am not putting a number on it.

## Device three: you cannot simply show up

The third device is why the wage never gets competed down. You are not allowed to walk up to the pier and offer to do the work for less.

Doing longshore work requires being on a register, and the register is a rationed list. In the Port of New York and New Jersey, you cannot legally do the work unless you are placed on the Longshore Workers' Register, and before the process even begins a waterfront employer has to sponsor you with a letter. On the West Coast the registered workforce is a defined, counted population. In 2024 the employer association put it at 15,759 registered workers, a specific headcount rather than an open labor market.

That is the entire game, and it is the same game the [harbor pilots](/blog/how-harbor-pilots-are-paid/) play from a few feet away on the same water. A pilot's income comes from a state board voting that only sixty people may hold the job. A longshoreman's income is protected because the register decides how many hands are qualified to work the ships, and you cannot undercut a wage you are not permitted to bid on. Scarcity that somebody enforces is worth more than skill that anyone can supply.

## Device four: the fight over the robots, run two opposite ways

The fourth device is about the future, and the two coasts made exactly opposite bets.

The East and Gulf Coast bet against the machine. The new contract, in the union's telling, delivered "full protections against automation," and the prior settlement spells out the mechanism. Its workforce-protection language states, in plain terms, that "there shall be no fully-automated terminals developed and no fully-automated equipment used," defining fully automated as machinery "devoid of human interaction." It goes further on the halfway case: "there shall be no implementation of semi-automated equipment or technology/automation until both parties agree to workforce protections and staffing levels." Automation is banned outright at the top end and gated behind union consent in the middle. The job is defended by forbidding the thing that would eliminate it.

The West Coast took the other bargain, decades ago, and got paid for it. The employer association there holds contractual rights it purchased in exchange for guarantees: the right to introduce modern technology beginning in 2002 and automation beginning in 2008. In return the union received higher pay and pensions, workforce guarantees, maintenance-and-repair jurisdiction over the automated equipment, and minimum manning levels. One coast said no to the robot. The other coast said yes and sold the yes for a share of what the robot produces, including the exclusive right to maintain it. Both are strategies for capturing the value of automation instead of being erased by it. They just point in opposite directions, and it is entirely reasonable to think the East Coast members and the West Coast members made different, defensible calls.

This is the auto-workers question from the other end of the dock. The [UAW fought automation and tiers](/blog/how-auto-workers-are-paid/) inside the plant. The longshore contracts fight it at the terminal gate, one by prohibition and one by toll.

## What sits on top of the wage

None of the earnings figures above are the whole compensation, because the benefit stack is enormous and the worker funds none of it.

The West Coast compensation study found that benefits, meaning health, retirement, holidays, vacation and the rest, cost employers an average of $29.37 an hour, against about $18.80 for union workers generally and $8.76 for non-union workers. That is a benefit load per hour that by itself exceeds what many American jobs pay in total. The health plan carries no premiums, no co-pays, and no deductibles for members, and the employer association reported the healthcare cost per registrant at $62,040 in 2024.

The pension is a real defined benefit, the kind most of the private sector no longer offers. The study described a plan paying up to $95,460 a year with a surviving spouse receiving 75 percent. The employer association reported a maximum yearly pension of $99,900 in 2024, and the West Coast 2022 to 2028 contract raised the pension 19 percent, reaching a target of $113,000 a year for the longest-tenured members by 2028. That contract also delivered a 32 percent pay increase over six years and a one-time $70 million pandemic bonus, and it runs retroactive to 2022 through 2028.

On the East and Gulf Coast, the retirement money is layered on top of the wage as its own line. The prior settlement added a money-purchase retirement contribution of $1.00 an hour effective October 1, 2018, and another $1.00 an hour effective October 1, 2020, for qualifying employees. That is $2.00 an hour going into retirement for every hour, on top of whatever the wage says. It is the same structure as the [union trades' fringe package](/blog/how-union-tradesmen-are-paid/), where a third of the money never touches the paycheck and none of it requires the worker to pay in first.

## The new East Coast contract, and what I can and cannot prove about it

In early 2025 the East and Gulf Coast master contract was ratified by nearly 99 percent of voting members. It runs six years, effective October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2030. The union called it "a record shattering 62 percent wage increase," with the container royalty funds returned in full and the automation protections described above.

Secondary reporting says the base wage rises from the old $39 top rate to about $63 over the six years, which works out to roughly $4 an hour of raises a year and is where the 62 percent figure comes from. I want to be precise about the evidence here. The 62 percent, the six-year term, and the roughly 99 percent ratification are from the union directly. The specific $39-to-$63 wage path is from news coverage, not from contract text I read. The detailed year-by-year scale, the exact royalty language, and the semi-automation clauses of the new contract were not available to me at a primary source, so the verified contract mechanics in this article, the wage scale, the royalty formula, the automation definitions, and the money-purchase plan, come from the immediately prior 2018 to 2024 settlement filed with the federal regulator. The regulator's agreement library very likely holds the 2024 settlement too, for anyone who wants to verify the new terms line by line.

A widely repeated figure puts the total value of the 2025 contract around $35 billion. That comes from trade press and I could not confirm it in any primary union or contract document, so I am flagging it rather than asserting it.

## The tell: the federal category that would contain this job

Here is the number that proves the union structure, not the job, is what multiplies the pay.

There is a generic federal occupational category that would hold dockworkers. It is Standard Occupational Classification 53-7121, "Tank Car, Truck, and Ship Loaders." Its reported median is about $28.30 an hour, or $58,870 a year. I have to add a caveat about even that figure: the federal statistics agency's own page returned an access error to every route I tried, so I am reporting the $28.30 and $58,870 from a federal-data mirror, which republishes the government wage series but should be treated as secondary until confirmed at the source.

Still, the comparison is stark. The generic category that nominally contains this work reports a median around $58,870. Full-time registered West Coast workers averaged $243,000 in 2024, and foremen averaged $373,000. The union longshoreman earns roughly four times the median of the plain-vanilla loader category, and the foreman earns more than six times it. Same physical act of moving cargo. The difference is not muscle or skill. It is the register, the royalty, the hours guarantee, and the contract.

| Measure | Annual |
|---|---|
| Ship Loaders, SOC 53-7121 median (secondary) | $58,870 |
| Old ILA top wage at 2,080 hours (my arithmetic) | $81,120 |
| West Coast full-time registered average, 2024 | $243,000 |
| West Coast foremen average, 2024 | $373,000 |

## The cost column, honestly

I want to flag one thing I could not stand behind. Marine cargo handling is dangerous work, and secondary sources cite longshore fatality rates several times the national average and injury rates roughly double. The underlying federal fatality and injury tables were behind the same access wall that blocked the wage page, so I could not confirm those rates at a primary source and I am not publishing a number. The hazard is real. The specific multiples I could not verify.

What is documented is the shape of the bargain. The pay is high, the benefits are unusually complete, and both are protected by devices, the register and the automation clauses, that exist precisely because the underlying work is exposed. The register keeps the wage from being competed down. The automation language keeps the job from being engineered away. Strip either one out and the six-figure average does not survive.

## What a salaried reader should take from this

**The wage is the decoy. Find the hours rule.** A $39 base wage becomes a $243,000 average mostly because the contract pays for more hours than it works, through shift guarantees and a program that pays when there is no ship. When you read any pay figure, the question underneath it is whether hours paid and hours worked are the same number. For a salaried worker they diverge in the employer's favor, through unpaid overtime. Here they diverge in the worker's favor, on purpose, in writing.

**Scarcity you are not allowed to break is the whole asset.** You cannot walk onto the pier and underbid a longshoreman, because the register decides who is qualified to work the ships. That is the same mechanism behind the harbor pilots' capped rosters and the trades' hiring halls. Every well-paid job in this series has somebody enforcing scarcity. A wage that anyone can supply gets competed to the floor, and a wage that a list protects does not.

**Automation is a negotiation, not a weather event.** Two coasts faced the same robots and cut opposite deals. One banned them and gated the halfway machines behind consent. The other sold the automation rights up front for pay, pensions, minimum manning, and the exclusive right to maintain the equipment. Both captured the value instead of being erased by it. When your own employer talks about automating your role, the live question is whether you have any instrument, contract, license, or scarce credential, to capture a share of what the machine produces, or whether you simply absorb the loss.

**Read the benefit stack, not the base.** A $2.00-an-hour retirement contribution on top of the wage, a health plan with no premiums or co-pays, and a pension climbing toward $113,000 a year are not extras here. They are a third bucket of pay that never appears in the hourly rate, funded entirely by the employer. This is the same lesson as [the union trades](/blog/how-union-tradesmen-are-paid/): the number to ask for is the total package, and the best part of it is often the part that never touches the paycheck.

## Related reading

- [How harbor pilots are paid](/blog/how-harbor-pilots-are-paid/): the other job on the same dock, where a board votes on how many people may hold it.
- [How auto workers are paid](/blog/how-auto-workers-are-paid/): fighting automation and tiers from inside the plant.
- [How ROV pilots and saturation divers are paid](/blog/how-rov-pilots-and-divers-are-paid/): the automation fight underwater, where the robot is a line on the same rate sheet as the diver it replaces.
- [How union tradesmen are paid](/blog/how-union-tradesmen-are-paid/): the total package, and a third of the money that never hits the check.
- [The raise written into the contract](/blog/public-sector-union-jobs-beat-inflation/): the wider set of workers whose raise is a document, not a decision.
- [COLA versus the merit raise](/blog/cola-vs-w2-wages/): why a pay figure set by formula pulls away from one set by discretion.

## Fact-check notes and sources

Wage and earnings figures come from a union release, a federal filing of the prior master contract, an employer association, and a wage table. Where a figure is secondary or could not be verified, it is labeled as such rather than asserted.

- **The 2025 East and Gulf Coast contract**, its nearly 99 percent ratification, the six-year October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2030 term, the "record shattering 62 percent wage increase," the "full container royalty funds returned to the ILA," and the "full protections against automation," are from the [International Longshoremen's Association (South Atlantic and Gulf Coast District) ratification announcement](https://www.iladistrict.com/ila-ratifies-six-year-master-contract-with-nearly-99-approval-record-wage-increases-automation-protections-until-2030/).
- **The $39-to-$63 wage path** is from [CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-much-do-dock-workers-make-longshoreman-salary/) and is **secondary**; the roughly $4-an-hour annual step is arithmetic from that path, not a figure CBS states. I did not read the new contract's wage schedule at a primary source. **The roughly $35 billion total contract value is trade-press only and is not confirmed at a primary source; it is not asserted here.**
- **The prior 2018 to 2024 master contract mechanics** are from the [Federal Maritime Commission's filing of the USMX-ILA Master Contract Memorandum of Settlement](https://www2.fmc.gov/FMC.Agreements.Web/Public/Document/30005): the seniority wage scale with a top rate climbing $1.00 a year from $35.00 to $39.00; the container royalty formula (a rising lump sum of $15 million in 2018 to 2019 growing to $19 million in 2023 to 2024, plus 50 percent of the remaining excess, with shares of zero if there is no excess); the automation language banning fully automated terminals and equipment and gating semi-automation behind agreed workforce protections; and the money-purchase retirement contributions of $1.00 an hour effective October 1, 2018 plus an additional $1.00 an hour effective October 1, 2020. **The new 2024 to 2025 contract's detailed scale, royalty language, and semi-automation clauses were not read at primary; the FMC agreements library likely also holds the 2024 settlement for direct verification.**
- **West Coast earnings and benefit figures** are from the [Pacific Maritime Association's Contract Highlights](https://www.pmanet.org/contract-highlights/): the 2024 averages ($236,000 longshore, $264,000 clerks, $373,000 foremen, $243,000 full-time registered, and the wider $254,000 "Average Annual Earnings" headline); the 15,759 registered workers; the $62,040 healthcare cost per registrant and $99,900 maximum yearly pension; the 2022 to 2028 contract terms (32 percent pay increase, 19 percent pension increase reaching $113,000 by 2028, and the $70 million one-time bonus); and the automation bargain granting the association technology rights from 2002 and automation rights from 2008 in exchange for pay, pension, workforce guarantees, maintenance-and-repair jurisdiction, and minimum manning. **PMA is the employer association, an interested party, so its compensation framing is primary but advocacy-adjacent.**
- **The mechanism that hours paid exceed hours worked**, the Pay Guarantee Program, the July 2021 basic ($46.23) and top-skilled ($52.03) first-shift rates, the 2021 and 2022 earnings by classification, and the benefit-cost figures ($29.37 an hour employer benefit cost versus $18.80 union and $8.76 non-union, a defined-benefit pension up to $95,460 a year with a 75 percent survivor benefit, and no premiums, co-pays, or deductibles), are from the PMA-commissioned [Crawford compensation study summary](https://www.pmanet.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Summary-Crawford-Compensation-Study-July-2022.pdf).
- **East Coast entry control**, requiring placement on the Longshore Workers' Register and prior sponsorship by a waterfront employer, is from the [Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor](https://waterfront.ny.gov/longshore-workers) and is treated as **secondary**.
- **The container royalty collection structure**, serving qualified ILA members and processing the manifest, voyage, vessel, container, and tonnage data carriers report, is from the [Container Royalty Central Collection Fund](https://www.crccfund.org/) and is treated as **secondary**. **The dollar amount an individual registered worker receives annually from container royalties could not be verified at a primary plan document and is not asserted; only the union-wide formula is verified.**
- **The generic federal category** SOC 53-7121, Tank Car, Truck, and Ship Loaders, with a median of about $28.30 an hour and $58,870 a year, is reported via [O*NET OnLine](https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/53-7121.00), which republishes the Bureau of Labor Statistics wage series. This is **secondary**: bls.gov returned an access error to every fetch route attempted, so the figure should be confirmed at bls.gov/oes/current/oes537121.htm before being relied on.
- **The old top wage annualized at 2,080 hours** ($81,120) is my own arithmetic, offered only to illustrate that even the wage on a full-year basis sits far below actual union longshore earnings. It is not a paycheck; the whole point of the article is that hours paid exceed hours worked.
- **Longshore injury and fatality rates**: secondary sources cite a marine-terminal fatality rate several times the national average and an injury rate roughly double, but the underlying federal fatality and injury tables could not be read directly because the statistics agency blocked every fetch attempt, so **no rate is asserted here**.

*This post is informational and journalistic, not career, legal, or financial advice. It describes a published union release, a federal filing of a collective bargaining agreement, an employer association's own figures, and government wage data. Contract rates escalate on scheduled dates and several figures are as of 2021 to 2028 as noted, so verify current status before relying on any of them. Mentions of specific unions, associations, and agencies are nominative fair use, and no affiliation is implied.*


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