Of the 45,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association now on strike along the East Coast, from Maine to Texas, are the 7,000 or so who are in the Port of New York. Unlike in the rest of the country, where they are walking the picket line, we don’t say all the ILA members “work” here because too many of them have low-show or no-show jobs, as the Daily News and others have documented over the years. Some get paid the equivalent of 25 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year (and 366 in leap years). Otherwise, how else are they going to bring in $400,000 a year? These very rich positions are controlled by the likes of ILA Local 1804-1, Local 1, Local 1814 and Local 1588. But behind the union are the Five Families of organized crime, the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese, who control the waterfront, which extends on both sides of the harbor, the New York side, with piers in Brooklyn and Staten Island, and the New Jersey side, with docks in Newark and Elizabeth. Take Local 1804-1, long influenced by the Genovese, say prosecutors. The former head was Harold Daggett. He’s now the international president, who is leading the strike, while his son Dennis runs the local. We are sure that there are some crooks and criminals in Boston and Baltimore and New Orleans and Houston, but here the mob is endemic, totally built in. The crime and featherbedding inflates costs and imposes a mob tax on goods moving through the port. Which is why the two states formed the bistate Waterfront Commission to fight the gangsters 70 years ago. As part of the commission’s mission to root out the capos and the soldiers and the associates, the agency also sought to end the phony jobs and open the real jobs on the docks to women and minorities, which the ILA/mob kept out. This was their thing and they wanted to keep it for themselves. Daggett successfully counterattacked through the weakest link: the New Jersey legislature. Daggett and the ILA got legislators to remove Jersey from the commission. Gov. Phil Murphy went along and even though Gov. Hochul and New York pursued the case up the U.S. Supreme Court, Trenton was allowed to quit when the justices agreed. New York then formed a new commission to police this side of the harbor, while Jersey gave the task to the State Police, who have little experience with mob cases. Daggett is now the face of a nationwide strike, with the large majority of ILA members who walked off the job being outside of New York and New Jersey. They want a better deal with a new contract and are choosing to withhold their labor. But here in New York Harbor, the ILA has the best deal possible. A $400,000 gig where you don’t have to show up is about as sweet as it gets. The strike will end, perhaps soon or perhaps it will take longer, and the ILA will go back to work handling cargo. And when the ports reopen, the mob will still be right there, having a free hand now in New Jersey, while in New York, the new waterfront cops will be chasing and fighting the bad guys.