Workers Are Still Reeling After Baltimore’s Bridge Disaster. Will Anyone Listen?

After a container ship struck the Key Bridge and destroyed it, news coverage focused on the supply chain and the stock market. We spoke with the workers and families whose lives were upended.

By Paul Blest, More Perfect Union

Thousands remain out of work as a result of last month’s tragic incident where a cargo ship struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, killing six workers, destroying the bridge, and causing billions in damages and lost wages and revenue.

The bridge collapsed around 1:30 a.m. on March 26 when the Dali container ship struck one of its piers and most of the bridge fell into the Patapsco River. The six people who were killed were all immigrant workers, part of a maintenance crew working on the bridge. 

Before it collapsed, the 1.6-mile-long bridge was used by tens of thousands of vehicles a day. Vessel traffic has been suspended indefinitely in the Port of Baltimore, which ranks in the top 20 in the U.S. by total tonnage entering and leaving the port. 

Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of the disaster has been its impact on the 15,000-plus people employed in the Port of Baltimore.

"We have 2,400 deep sea members, another few hundred processors in our coal facility," Scott Cowan, the president of the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 333, told More Perfect Union. “Of those, 1,800 are probably without work, so it's a major impact on the local.”

Some people in the neighborhoods near where the disaster occurred are frustrated with the media’s coverage, which has focused more on the macroeconomic implications rather than those impacted most severely. 

“We got lives we still gotta find and y'all worrying about the financial struggle?” Baltimore resident Ashley Hill told More Perfect Union. “We might get hit financially for a little while, but what's more important? Y'all pockets or the lives that we lost at 1:30 in the morning?"

Maryland passed a law earlier this month expanding unemployment benefits to Baltimore port workers and establishing a scholarship fund for the families of the highway workers who were killed on the job. President Joe Biden has also promised that the channel will be fully open by the end of May. 

But moving forward, some see what happened last month as a reminder of how treacherous essential jobs like construction and those at the port are, and why the people doing them should live more comfortably. 

"Working for the port is more of a hazardous condition, because you're dealing with all types of weather,” Hill said. “For port people — they definitely need to get paid more because they're dealing with such dangerous equipment all around them 24/7."  

Watch our latest video for more on how port workers and community members are dealing with the fallout from the bridge collapse:

What else is happening in the states

• The Alabama House passed a bill banning subsidies for companies that voluntarily recognize unions; Georgia and Tennessee both passed similar laws in the past year.  

• Connecticut Attorney General William Tong opened a probe into grocery price gouging. 

• Vermont could soon expand the right to unionize to agricultural workers, as a bill that already passed the Senate last year is currently working its way through the House. The same bill, SB 102, would also ban captive audience meetings. 

• A California Republican has introduced a bill to ban legislative NDAs, which were used during negotiations between lawmakers, businesses, and unions over the state’s new law boosting labor rights and pay for fast-food workers. A top donor to Gov. Gavin Newsom owns Panera Bread franchises, which were exempted from the law due to a clause defining a fast-food restaurant as one that doesn’t have an on-site bakery. 

• Hawaii lawmakers are set to pass a bill that would grant county governments the right to phase out and ban short-term rentals, such as Airbnbs, in their jurisdictions. Since we last wrote about this a few weeks ago, Gov. Josh Green has endorsed the legislation. 

• An aggressive union-busting bill in Iowa, which would have inundated unions with legal costs by forcing them to sue employers for lists of employees every time a CBA expired, died without receiving a vote. Iowa Teamsters had led protests against the bill and threatened strikes over it. 

What we’re reading

• The Small-Business Tyrant Has a Favorite Political Party | Jamelle Bouie, The New York Times

• Corporate Power Has Long Dominated Alabama. Autoworkers May Change That. | Derek Seidman, Truthout

• The EPA Has Done Nearly Everything It Can to Clean Up This Town. It Hasn’t Worked. | Lisa Song, ProPublica

• The Real Culprit in Our Housing and Homelessness Crisis: Wall Street | Thom Hartmann, The New Republic

• A 32-Hour Workweek Is Ours for the Taking | Sarah Jaffe, In These Times