In his 2024 State of the State speech, Republican South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster said: “One thing we do not need is more labor unions in South Carolina. We got where we are without them and we do not need them now. We are a right-to-work state.”
The Governor boasted, “We got the lowest union membership in the country.” [Note: South Carolina has the lowest rate of union workers in the U.S.: 2.3 percent.]
McMaster claimed that the state’s prosperity faces “a clear and present danger from the big labor unions” and blames the unions for “crippling and distorting” the prosperity of other states.
McMaster singled out the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) — a strong union presence at the Port of Charleston in South Carolina — as a problem. Portraying the unions as a federal priority and vowing not to “allow the Biden administration’s vigorous pro-union policies to chip away at South Carolina’s sovereign interest,” McMaster said, “We will fight all the way to the gates of hell, and we will win this battle.”
Members of the ILA in South Carolina responded to McMaster’s “vicious attack” by holding a rally at the Statehouse in Columbia. See photo below.
Still stinging from a speech in which Gov. Henry McMaster vowed to fight labor unions to the “gates of hell,” the International Longshoremen’s Association said it will hold a rally in support of organized labor on Thursday at the Statehouse in Columbia.https://t.co/JIFaRPBO1n
— Post and Courier Columbia (@PCColumbia) February 14, 2024
ILA President Harold J. Daggett (2011-present) responded to McMaster’s “scathing” speech with his own scathing statement, asserting that McMaster is “completely wrong. By any measurement—wages, income, or per capita wealth—the pro-union states that McMaster puts down are much more prosperous than South Carolina and other so-called ‘right-to-work’ states. In fact, South Carolina is near the bottom in any ranking of wages or per capita wealth.”
[Note: Mississippi — another right-to-work state — has the lowest personal income per capita, at $46,248; South Carolina is near the bottom at (42nd), at $59,318.]
Daggett’s incendiary response also suggested South Carolina’s history of racism played a part in McMaster’s stance, trumpeting the ILA’s “long and proud history of advocating for both labor rights and civil rights in South Carolina” — and stating that “over 100 years ago, McMaster’s political ancestors took the lead in the fight to force Black Americans to work for free. Now McMaster has pledged to fight ‘to the gates of hell’ to prevent South Carolina workers from being paid fairly for their work. McMaster will lose that fight, just as his predecessors lost theirs.”
[According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Black workers continue to have a higher union membership rate (11.8 percent) than White workers (9.8 percent), Asian workers (7.8 percent), and Hispanic workers (9.0 percent). And according to Daggett, 70 percent of ILA’s members are Black.]
Daggett also touted straightforward economic outcomes, writing: “Despite McMaster’s claims, the actual facts are that median earnings of union workers are consistently higher than the earnings of non-union workers throughout the United States. This is particularly the case for Black workers.”
The union leader continued to portray the Governor as an enabler of draconian employers who “object to paying fair wages and benefits” for union workers. Daggett, again dealing the race card, says those employers are “people that McMaster is used to socializing with—whether it was at his segregated fraternity in college, or at his all-white country club.”
Daggett displays even more outrage in his video response (below), calling McMaster’s speech “disgusting” and the Governor “a disgrace.”
Daggett adds: “There’s something wrong with this man. How the hell did he ever become governor?…He’s a leftover from the 30s and 40s, guarantee he’s got a hood in the closet” — a bold allusion to the sartorial preference of Ku Klux Klan members.
