The Long Dock Strike That Wasn’t–For Now

The East Coast and Gulf Coast longshore workers’ strike that idled 36 ports and threatened the nation’s economic recovery was over almost as quickly as it began. Two things were clear as soon as the 45,000 union members walked out last Tuesday: The union was prepared for a long fight over wages and automation, and the White House was going to side with the union and not use its legal tools to force them back to work.

The three-day strike was suspended with an agreement between waterfront employers and the International Longshore Association (ILA) on a 62-percent pay increase over six years. That was a big bump over the 50-percent hike earlier offered by the employers, but less than the 77-percent increase sought by the union.

A new strike deadline of January 15 was set. The two sides will now try to reach agreement on the decades-long issues of automating cargo handling on waterfront terminals. The union insists it will not allow machines to replace workers, even though the West Coast dockworkers – the International Longshore and Warehouse Union – have long allowed substantial automation.

“I think there were a couple of factors. The employers realized they would have to do better than the 50-percent wage increase. Plus, the pressure from the White House,’’ said Dick Marzano, a Port of Tacoma commissioner and a Local 23 longshoreman in Tacoma.

For Marzano, it was a matter of fairness given the profits shipping lines made coming out of the COVID pandemic.

“The companies have been having record earnings. And the longshore workers stayed at work all through the pandemic, at some risk to themselves, to keep the cargo moving. I know there were some workers who died (from COVID) during that time,’’ he said.

The lead-up to the strike suggested it would be a prolonged work stoppage. The union was talking tough, and talks had broken off weeks before in a dispute over non-union automated truck gates at an Alabama port.

“We are prepared to fight as long as necessary, to stay out on strike for whatever period of time it takes, to get the wages and protections against automation our ILA members deserve,” said Harold Daggett, the ILA’s leader. The union’s last strike was in 1977 and lasted 44 days.

Waterfront union leaders are known for their swagger, and they are emboldened by the recent success of other unions in negotiating hefty pay increases. The best-paid blue-collar workers, they can earn upwards of $200,000 a year, with generous pension and health benefits.

The leverage of the 45,000-member union is uniquely powerful because work stoppages halt the flow of billions of dollars of goods and affect thousands of businesses and their employees from Maine to Texas.

A prolonged strike stretching into weeks or months could have stalled the nation’s economic recovery and caused goods shortages nationwide. It would have been another serious blow to the Port of Baltimore, shut down earlier this year when a container ship struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

Presidential politics also appears to have played a significant role in bringing the strike to a rapid end. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris clearly wanted to avoid food shortages and other economic disruptions in the wake of Hurricane Helene as the presidential election grows closer.

As the strike deadline approached, President Biden deployed his staff to meet directly with members of the United States Maritime Alliance, which represents port operators. Biden urged employers “to resolve this in a way that accounts for the success of these companies in recent years and the invaluable contributions” of the longshoremen, The New York Times reported.

Critically, Biden signaled early that he would not use the Taft-Hartley Act to order the union back to work, as President George W. Bush did in a 2002 West Coast longshore work stoppage.

“Foreign ocean carriers have made record profits since the pandemic, when longshoremen put themselves at risk to keep ports open. It’s time those ocean carriers offered a strong and fair contract that reflects ILA workers’ contribution to our economy and to their record profits,’’ the president said in a post on X.

The strike was not likely to lead to a surge of additional cargo at the Seattle and Tacoma ports, said John Wolfe, executive director of the Northwest Seaport Alliance that manages shipping operations at the two ports. Shifting cargo flows from the East Coast to the West would involve re-routing ships in the Pacific and transporting containers by train across country, which would take months to plan, he said.

Many companies had tried to stock up early on product in anticipation of the job action.

In any case, the largest West Coast ports, Los Angeles and Long Beach, are jammed with cargo and would be hard-pressed to absorb more containers, said Jordan Royer, with the Pacific Maritime Shipping Association, which represents shipping lines.

The Seattle and Tacoma ports, still struggling to rebound from a downturn during the pandemic, would welcome diverted cargo, as they did in earlier California labor disputes.

Shipping disruptions during the pandemic showed that global logistics systems are tightly intertwined. Slowdowns in one region can quickly ripple through the supply chains.

The maritime industry and its unions have struggled over automating shipping processes since the container revolution of the 1960s. Shipping lines and cargo owners want to increase the speed of container handling to save time and money, but the powerful unions have often resisted changes they see as threatening their jobs.

There are four main components of container handling at ports: Trucks carrying containers enter terminals, where they are checked in and assigned a place of rest on the yard; containers are then picked up and transported to the pier, then hoisted aboard the ship by towering cranes. The process is reversed for cargo unloaded from ships. At some terminals, import cargo is moved from the ships, stored briefly, then loaded onto “on-dock” rail cars.

By contract, longshore workers carry out all these cargo-handling operations.

The West Coast longshore workers were the first to negotiate agreements in 1960 that allowed the new technology, in exchange for protecting the current workforce, sharing increased profits through better wages and benefits, and other concessions from management.

The East Coast union fought unsuccessfully to slow containerization. Their last strike in 1977 was over wages and protection of jobs threatened by containerization.

In fact, ports in Europe and many U.S. ports are making technological improvements to accelerate cargo handling. In Long Beach, CA, a massive new terminal has automated machines that pluck containers from arriving trucks, stack them and load them onto ships with little human intervention. Longshore workers still monitor the activity, but they do it with computer screens.

Marzano, the longshore worker and port commissioner, said labor and management can achieve the twin goals of more efficiency while also preserving good-paying jobs.

He notes that in 1990, his Tacoma union local had 480 workers on its rolls. Today, it boasts 1,500 with a significant increase in cargo volume and some new technology to speed terminal operations.

Although last year’s contract signing by the West Coast’s ILWU ensures some measure of labor peace for six years, the union is proud of its fighting history dating back to its founding in 1934. Waterfront employers and the union fought a bitter battle in 1948, which resulted in a mutual agreement to work cooperatively.

Relations were relatively peaceful until 1971, when disputes over pay and work rules led to a 134-day strike. Thirty-one years later, after a breakdown in negotiations led to a union slow-down and a lockout by employers, President George W. Bush invoked the rarely used Taft-Hartley Act to force a return to work.

Again in 2014, the ILWU and waterfront employers could not come to terms. Management accused the union of deliberately slowing crane productivity, leading to another lockout threat. Although the union and employers eventually signed a contract, it was estimated retailers lost $7 billion due to the disruption in trade.

Tacoma commissioner Marzano, a veteran of many labor disputes, says some technological advances are inevitable at East Coast ports. The competitive pressures from other ports will force those changes, he said.

“I think the ILA will realize they will have to accept some automation. I don’t think they will agree to full automation like they have in Long Beach,’’ he said, but they likely will accede to some new technology in exchange for economic benefits, such as profit-sharing.