A settlement is becoming less and less likely. The strike is looking increasingly imminent. Dockworkers at U.S. East Coast ports are on the warpath.
Over the last few hours there have been heated meetings between the union, the International Longhoremen’s Association (ILA), and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), representing employers, to reach a settlement on the renewal of the six-year labour contract that expires on Sept. 30th, but positions remain distant.
Negotiations, which had sluggishly resumed in August, had broken down the previous month following the backlash of protests among workers sparked by APM Terminals’ decision to introduce an automated gate system at one of its terminals at the Port of Mobile, Alabama, that can process trucks without using manpower.
The case touched a raw nerve: the ILA’s deep-seated hostility to the introduction of automation processes at U.S. ports, which workers say threaten to have a devastating effect on employment.
“There’s no point trying to negotiate a new agreement with USMX when one of its major companies continues to violate our agreement,” said Mr. Daggett. “Its sole aim is eliminating ILA jobs through automation.” ILA President Harold Daggett had said at the time, lashing out at Maersk.
The battle against technological innovation is very ideological and goes far beyond the room to maneuver granted by contract renewal negotiations, which instead focus more on the wage part.
In a video posted on the ILA website, talking about the state of negotiations, Mr. Daggett mentions his idea of setting up a global alliance of port and maritime workers: “Let’s take a company, Maersk Line. Let’s say they want to go into Chile and build a fully automated terminal. Well, if that’s going to happen, this Alliance now will kick in and we will shut down Maersk throughout the world.” He stressed that it doesn’t matter who they are, if shipping lines intend to set up automated terminals, “we are going to shut them down around the world.”
ILA Vice President Dennis Daggett also calls automation a cancer that has to be stopped, but without clarifying how this issue can fit into the bargaining with the USMX.
The pay-rise battle is more tangible. However, the ILA admits that it is coming to a dead end. The contract affects at least 45,000 dockworkers along U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast ports. The union claims it has 85,000 members from Maine to Texas.
“There is a real chance we won’t have a new agreement in place,” says Harold Dagget; ” We will hit the streets on October 1st if we don’t get the kind of contract we deserve.”
The union’s leading figure points out how shipping companies have earned billions of dollars over the years: “We never shut the ports down during Covid, we kept working … to keep those ships going,” he points out. “ During Covid ILA members lost their lives when people worked from home.” He stressed that dockers put themselves on the line, losing valuable resources and lives, but kept working to make sure shipping companies had their cargo handled. His message to shipping companies: “We kept going to keep these companies alive. Mark my words: we’ll shut them down October 1st if we don’t get the kind of wages we deserve.”
As CNBC explained, the current contract stipulates that ILA-represented workers earn between $20 and $37 per hour. Depending on seniority, skill level, hazard pay, overtime and tonnage bonus (which can be between $15,000 and $20,000 per year), a dockworker can earn between $150,000 and $250,000 per year.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Ila is pushing for a 77% pay rise over six years, far more than the 32% increase the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (Ilwu) attained in West Coast ports.
According to Sea Intelligence, the possible strike could cost US East Coast ports dearly. Estimating a total throughput of 2.3 million TEUs for October, the consultancy firm goes so far as to say that shutting operations at these ports of call down could mean not being able to handle 74,000 TEUs a day, i.e. 36,000 TEUs of goods being imported and 38,000 TEUs of goods being exported.
Not only that, once the potential strike is over, the ports would then have to manage and process the backlog that would have built up in the meantime. Assuming that East Coast ports can get to handle at most up to 13% more than the normally handled container flows, it could take no less than five to six extra days of work for each day of strike action to clear the entire backlog.
In short, a one-week strike called for October 1st would lead to major congestion problems until mid-November. If the strike were to last two weeks, the ports could take two months before they could get back to normal. This means it would take until the beginning of next to get back to being fully-operational again.
Translation by Giles Foster