NYSA GAI: how the Guaranteed Annual Income works in the Port of New York and New Jersey

The NYSA GAI is the Guaranteed Annual Income paid to eligible ILA longshoremen in the Port of New York and New Jersey. It tops up your income in a contract year, up to a ceiling of 1,900 hours at your basic straight-time rate, and it's run by the NYSA-ILA GAI Fund in Jersey City.

Plenty of guys in the port talk about GAI like everyone knows how it works. Most know their own piece of it. Here's what the agreement actually says. Sources are the NYSA-ILA Collective Bargaining Agreement 2018-2024 (Article XXI, Income Guarantee, and Article VIII, Section 7) and the NYSA-ILA Memorandum of Settlement 2024-2030.

What GAI is for

The CBA puts the purpose in one line: the fund exists "to provide benefits to longshoremen whose work opportunities were eroded by containerization."

The detailed rules for who is eligible and how benefits are figured live in the GAI Fund's own documents. The CBA says so: "The terms and provisions of the GAI Plan are summarized in the GAI Fund's Summary Plan Description," available at the fund office, 10 Exchange Place, Suite 1400, Jersey City. We don't have that SPD, so we won't guess at the eligibility rules it holds. What's below is what the CBA itself says.

The ceiling: 1,900 hours at straight time

This is the number everyone means when they say "the GAI." Article XXI, Section 3:

"in no event shall any employee who receives payments from wages, vacation, holiday, GAI, unemployment or Workers' Compensation for 1,900 hours or more multiplied by the applicable basic straight time hourly wage rate in any contract year receive any additional GAI payments."

Read it slowly, because it's a dollar ceiling, not an hours count. Take 1,900 hours, multiply by your basic straight-time rate, and that's the most your income can reach with GAI's help. As written, it counts dollars, so overtime pay, holiday pay and vacation pay all go toward it. A man who worked fewer than 1,900 hours but made a lot of overtime can hit the ceiling anyway.

What counts toward it, by name: wages, vacation, holiday, GAI itself, unemployment, and workers' compensation. Jury duty pay isn't on that list.

When it's paid

Also Section 3. GAI is "made on an annual basis within a reasonable time after the end of the contract year," but you don't wait a year for all of it:

• At the end of each of the first three quarters, a qualified employee can be paid "up to 75% of so much of the amount of the guarantee cumulatively due."
• Advances of the amount cumulatively due come every two weeks, except the last period of a quarter, which is paid in advance for three weeks.
• Accountings are made every quarter.
• Final settlement comes "within a reasonable time after the end of the last quarter."

The contract year is October 1 to September 30.

GAI counts for your other benefits

One line in Section 3 that's easy to miss and matters a lot: "GAI payments shall be included in determining eligibility for vacation, holiday, pension, and welfare benefits." A slow year carried by GAI still counts toward those.

The CBA also funds Money Purchase Pension contributions on "GAI equivalent hours" through the NYSA-ILA Assessment Agreement (Article IX).

Becoming ineligible

Article XXI, Section 4. If you become ineligible for GAI, you "shall continue to be ineligible for at least a full twelve (12) month period from the date of their ineligibility." In that time you're available "only for assignment at the morning hiring or for PDO assignment on a portwide basis after all GAI recipients have been hired."

Section 2 is the other side of it: "All GAI-eligible employees shall be drafted to fill any and all vacancies existing in the Port." GAI-eligible men fill list vacancies first, by area, then zone, then portwide.

Absentee debits

The 2024-2030 NYSA MOS added to the port's absenteeism policy. Every absence costs one, one and a half, or two debits:

• 1.5 debits for an absence on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday, or on the day before or after a holiday, or on a working holiday
• 2 debits for failing to return to work after a break, or leaving work early without authorization
• 1 debit otherwise

The monthly maximum went from two to three debits. "There shall be no notes, including physician's notes, permitted to excuse a debit." Debits past three bring penalties: first a warning or pier-level meeting, then a one-week suspension, then two weeks, then three weeks port-wide, then suspension until you go before the Contract Board. Everything resets at the end of the contract year.

The policy doesn't say debits cost GAI hours or dollars. It's discipline. But a suspension is weeks you can't work, which is reason enough to know your count before you take a Monday off.

What we don't know, said plainly

• Who qualifies. Seniority classes, years and any qualifying-hours test are in the GAI Plan and SPD, not the CBA or MOS we hold.
• 2024-2030 changes. The 2024-2030 NYSA MOS has no GAI text. Article XXI reads the same in the 2004 and 2018 agreements apart from a date, so it looks unchanged, but that's a reading from silence.

For your own eligibility and balance, the GAI Department and the fund office are the source.

How DockBook tracks it

For NYSA members, DockBook's GAI Tracker works the Section 3 math as you go. It takes 1,900 hours times your straight-time rate, adds up the wages and vacation you've logged plus any GAI, unemployment or comp you enter, and shows how much room is left under the ceiling. NYSA members also get an Absenteeism Debits screen. Both are DockBook Pro. It's an estimate from what you log. The fund's quarterly accounting is the real number.

Related: why ILA pay is different port to port, MILA health eligibility hours, and DockBook for ILA members.