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Every day before dawn hundreds of men and women who work at the ports line up to get a work assignment at the dispatch hall of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 13 in Wilmington. Longshore member John Iacono says he was scraping by last year on just a couple days work a week. Now he gets an assignment every day.

“I got my number called and pretty much we can work every day now,” says Iacono. “It’s a lot less stressful. I know I’m working every day so I know the money’s there, the mortgage is paid, the bills are paid, food’s on the table. Everything’s better.”

The daily job assignments are around 1,000 a day now, says Local 13 Secretary Treasurer Armondo Porras. During the worst of the recession, the job count plummeted. “Back in those days, we had 250 jobs coming to our dispatch hall. All these men were waiting in line, hoping they would be getting them,” says Porras.

“Our members are starting to say, ‘You know what? I can buy that bike for junior because I’m not afraid anymore.’ So things look positive, yes.”

“It was brutal,” remembers Joe Bogdanovich, who has worked at the port for thre-and-a-half years.

“About summertime, just enough started coming in to get us all out there. There’s still nowhere near the amount of work that there used to be that there was two years ago. We’re still nowhere near that.”

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