re: River pilots seeking pay raise to nearly $700,000 annually despite shipping decline

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I personally know one of these guys and still can’t equate the man with the amount of money.

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I know one who is a gay son of a senato

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Studies of the long history of pilotage reveal that it is a unique institution and must be judged as such.8 In order to avoid invisible hazards, vessels approaching and leaving ports must be conducted from and to open waters by persons intimately familiar with the local waters. The pilot's job generally requires that he go outside the harbor's entrance in a small boat to meet incoming ships, board them and direct their course from open waters to the port. The same service is performed for vessels leaving the port. Pilots are thus indispensable cogs in the transportation system of every maritime economy. Their work prevents traffic congestion and accidents which would impair navigation in and to the ports. It affects the safety of lives and cargo, the cost and time expended in port calls, and in some measure, the competitive attractiveness of particular ports. Thus, for the same reasons that governments of most maritime communities have subsidized, regulated, or have themselves operated docks and other harbor facilities and sought to improve the approaches to their ports, they have closely regulated and often operated their ports' pilotage system.9

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The history and practice of pilotage demonstrate that, although inextricably geared to a complex commercial economy, it is also a highly personalized calling.10 A pilot does not require a formalized technical education so much as a detailed and extremely intimate, almost intuitive, knowledge of the weather, waterways and conformation of the harbor or river which he serves. This seems to be particularly true of the approaches to New Orleans through the treacherous and shifting channel of the Mississippi River.11 Moreover, harbor entrances where pilots can most conveniently make their homes and still be close to places where they board incoming and leave outgoing ships are usually some distance from the port cities they serve.12 These 'pilot towns' have begun, and generally exist today, as small communities of pilots perhaps near, but usually distinct from the port cities.13 In these communities young men have an opportunity to acquire special knowledge of the weather and water hazards of the locality and seem to grow up with ambitions to become pilots in the traditions of their fathers, relatives, and neighbors.14 We are asked, in effect, to say that Louisiana is without constitutional authority to conclude that apprenticeship under persons specially interested in a pilot's future is the best way to fit him for duty as a pilot officer in the service of the State.

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The States have had full power to regulate pilotage of certain kinds of vessels since 1789 when the first Congress decided that then existing state pilot laws were satisfactory and made federal regulation unnecessary. 1 Stat. 53, 54 (1789), 46 U.S.C. § 211, 46 U.S.C.A. § 211; Olsen v. Smith, 195 U.S. 332, 341, 25 S.Ct. 52, 53, 49 L.Ed. 224; Anderson v. Pacific Coast S.S. Co., 225 U.S. 187, 32 S.Ct. 626, 56 L.Ed. 1047. Louisiana legislation has controlled the activities and appointment of pilots since 1805—even before the Territory was admitted as a State.15 The State pilotage system, as it has evolved since 1805, is typical of that which grew up in most seaboard states and in foreign countries.16 Since 1805 Louisiana pilots have been State officers whose work has been controlled by the State.17 That Act forbade all but a limited number of pilots appointed by the governor to serve in that capacity. The pilots so appointed were authorized to select their own deputies.18 But pilots, and through them, their deputies, were literally under the command of the master and the wardens of the port of New Orleans, appointed by the governor. The master and wardens were authorized to make rules governing the practices of pilots, specifically empowered to order pilots to their stations, and to fine them for disobedience to orders or rules. And the pilots were required to make official bond for faithful performance of their duty. Pilots' fees were fixed;19 ships coming to the Mississippi were required to pay pilotage whether they took on pilots or not.20 The pilots were authorized to organize an association whose membership they controlled in order 'to enforce the legal regulations, and add to the efficiency of the service required thereby.'21 Moreover, efficient and adequate service was sought to be insured by requiring the Board of Pilot Commissioners to report to the governor and authorizing him simmarily to remove any pilot guilty of 'neglect of duty, habitual intemperance, carelessness, incompetency, or any act of conduct * * * showing' that he 'ought to be removed.' La.Act. No. 113, § 20 (1857). These provisions have been carried over with some revision into the present comprehensive Louisiana pilotage law. 6 La.Gen.Stat., cc. 6, 8 (1939). Thus in Louisiana, as elsewhere, it seems to have been accepted at an early date that in pilotage, unlike other occupations, competition for appointment, for the opportunity to serve particular ships and for fees, adversely affects the public interest in pilotage.22

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It is within the framework of this longstanding pilotage regulation system that the practice has apparently existed of permitting pilots, if they choose, to select their relatives and friends as the only ones ultimately eligible for appointment as pilots by the governor. Many other states have established pilotage systems which make the selection of pilots on this basis possible.23 Thus it was noted thirty years ago in a Department of Commerce study of pilotage that membership of pilot associations 'is limited to persons agreeable to those already members, generally relatives and friends of the pilots. Probably in pilotage more than in any other occupation in the United States the male members of a family follow the same work from generation to generation.'24

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Anything over $350k For those chumps is stealing.

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The pilots also want the authority to increase their number from 122 pilots to 150 to combat fatigue that could lead to accidents.

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