Dockworkers are no longer striking, but misinformation about their motivations is still spreading

Thousands of dockworkers responsible for loading and unloading cargo ships went on strike Oct. 1 after a contract expired between their union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, and port terminal operators. 

The sticking point? An impasse over wage increases, though the union agreed Oct. 3 to suspend the strike after receiving a better offer from employers represented by the United States Maritime Alliance.

But social media posts are claiming without evidence that the strike wasn’t just about money, but child sex trafficking. 

Dockworkers are "hearing children screaming to let them out from inside the containers," an Oct. 3 post said, but they are "not allowed to open the container … It’s a huge sex trafficking circle happening."

"SCREAMING CHILDREN INSIDE SHIPPING CONTAINERS," an Oct. 2 post said, sharing a screenshot of a Sept. 30 X post from Real Raw News. 

The X post said: "Dockworkers aren’t threatening to strike only because they’re underpaid, though that’s certainly true. But they are also furious and want to know why they hear screaming children inside shipping containers."

Featured Fact-check

Threads posts

stated on October 26, 2024 in a Threads post

Four Florida counties had “zero results” Oct. 26, and “something underhanded might be happening.”

Though it doesn’t say so on its X account, Real Raw News has a disclaimer on its website that says it publishes "humor, parody and satire." It regularly posts fabricated and fantastical stories. Among its recent articles are false claims that the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps hung talk show host Stephen Colbert and that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was executed at Guantánamo Bay. In 2023, we fact-checked and found False a Real Raw News claim that U.S. Navy SEALs rescued child sex slaves from a barge in San Francisco.

We contacted International Longshoremen’s Association President Harold Daggett about the claim but didn’t immediately hear back. 

We looked for, but found no, credible evidence such as news reporting or public statements from the association to corroborate the claim that its workers went on strike because of hearing children screaming in shipping containers. 

In an Oct. 1 union press release,  Daggett said members were demanding a "$5 an hour increase in wages for each of the six years of a new … contract."

A Sept. 30 statement from the union also mentioned wage discrepancies, not children screaming in shipping containers. We found nothing on the union’s website about that.

Human trafficking is real, and so is viral misinformation about it. In recent years we’ve fact-checked multiple unfounded claims about purported victims in shipping containers. Among them: that more than 60 children were found in shipping containers at a Delaware port and that U.S. Navy SEALs found more than 1,000 trafficked children and dead bodies in the ship that blocked the Suez Canal in 2021.     

We rate claims dockworkers went on strike over children screaming in shipping containers False.