By Peter Eavis
Longshoremen on the East and Gulf coasts are likely to strike today, halting most activity at some of the busiest U.S. ports, if their union and employers fail to end a monthslong standoff over a new labor contract.
The walkout by members of the International Longshoremen’s Association would cost the economy billions of dollars a day.
President Joe Biden can use a federal labor law to force the longshoremen back to work, but Sunday he said he was not considering using that power. In recent days, top government officials have pressed both sides to reach a deal.
“It’s not desirable for the Biden administration and for the economy,” Harley Shaiken, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in trade and labor issues, said of the strike prospect. “But it looks like it’s going to happen.”
The ILA, which has 47,000 members, has not held a strike at all the East and Gulf coast ports since 1977. The union and the United States Maritime Alliance, the employers’ negotiating group, are at loggerheads over wages and benefits. The union is also resisting the use of automated machinery at the ports.
Recently, big unions like the Teamsters and the United Automobile Workers have gotten much of what they asked for in contract negotiations. The longshoremen have even more leverage.
There is no practical alternative to the East and Gulf coast ports for moving many goods in and out of the eastern half of the country. And the ports can’t operate without longshoremen, who move metal boxes called containers on and off ships and handle other economically crucial cargo, like cars and heavy machinery.
Over a dozen ILA members at a union night out at Yankee Stadium in New York on Friday said they supported a strike.
Fearing a strike, many businesses ordered goods early so that they cleared the East and Gulf coast ports before Tuesday. But much cargo didn’t make it through in time and could be stranded at sea. Even if a strike is short, it could take weeks to clear the backlog.
John Wrenn, the chief operating officer at MHW, an alcoholic beverages distributor based in Manhasset, New York, is concerned that a strike might delay shipments and leave his business short in the lead up to Thanksgiving.
“Those are big opportunities for sales that will just be lost because products will not be on the shelves,” he said. MHW imports over 2,000 containers a year through the Port of New York and New Jersey, the third busiest port in the United States.
The ILA said a strike would not stop work on cruise ships. At the Port of New York and New Jersey, bulk foodstuffs like edible oils and orange juice will also be unaffected. But other food imports could stop, leading to shortages if a strike dragged on.
Stefanie Katzman, executive vice president at S. Katzman Produce, a fruit and vegetable supplier in the Bronx borough of New York, is particularly concerned that mangos, which are imported from Brazil, will spoil if they are stuck on a ship. She is considering flying some mangos in, a much more expensive option. “There’s nowhere near as much room to fly product as there is to send it in by boat,” Katzman said.
The West Coast ports will stay open because their longshoremen belong to another union, which agreed a new contract last year. Though some shipments are being diverted there, causing a recent surge in activity, those ports will not be able to absorb all the cargo that goes through East and Gulf coast ports, which account for three-fifths of U.S. container traffic. And businesses say transporting cargo from the West Coast ports on trucks or trains to the East Coast is too expensive for many goods and destinations.
The ILA broke off contract talks in June, saying it had discovered labor-saving technology at a port in Mobile, Alabama. The technology, used to check trucks in and out of the port, has been at the port since 2008, when it opened, a person familiar with the port said. Last week, the Maritime Alliance asked the National Labor Relations Board to force the ILA to resume negotiations, though it could take many weeks before the board acts after investigating the alliance’s claims.
The union’s president, Harold J. Daggett, has recently focused the ILA’s campaign more on wages, saying the raises offered by the Maritime Alliance were “insulting.”
Under the current contract, which was due to expire Monday, longshoremen earn a top rate of $39 an hour. The ILA is asking for a $5-an-hour raise for each of the six years of the new contract, which would put them at $69 an hour in the final year of the contract. The pay of West Coast longshoremen will rise to $60.85 an hour in 2027, the last year of their contract.
With overtime and shift work, a longshoreman’s income can exceed $200,000. But longshoremen say they have to put in long work weeks to make that much money.
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