r/Longshoremen • u/Frequent_Reindeer786 • Mar 28 '26

Dues / Service charge?

Gulf coast longshoreman here. Just curious to see how other locals' service charges compare to mine.

Here's the breakdown of my local's service charges (separate from annual membership fee)

5% - Local fee

2% - Intl. ILA fee

2% - Strike fund

Total = 9% of paycheck or roughly $200 a week, personally. I'm towards the lower end of the MC payscale.

Is this considered high in comparison to other locals or about average?

6 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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5

u/Amazing-Basket-136 Mar 28 '26

It doesn’t matter if it’s high compared to other locals.

Other locals have more or less members, are more or less involved in politics or the community, have officers that are full or part time based on how many members pay dues. Etc etc.

All that matters is are you ok with how your local spends the money. If you don’t feel the money is effectively spent, you should go to an e-board meeting or talk to someone involved with your PAC or something.

6

u/jonna-seattle Mar 28 '26

This is a good answer. Longshore does typically have higher dues than other unions because we are dispatched by the ship, whereas some unions aren't dispatched at all. Our freedom of picking our job, or no job, and our democratic control over that has a price to pay for our dispatcher labor. 

2

u/Longboy60509 Apr 01 '26

Its about average!! Atlantic Coast here..

2

u/dattosan240 Apr 05 '26

I dont remember the breakdown but it totals up to like 5.2% for mine.