Dock Workers Agree to Pause Historic Strike To Negotiate New Contract

Well, that didn’t take long.

Three days into a historic work stoppage, the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) union and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) reached a tentative deal Thursday that will pause the strikes that began at East and Gulf Coast ports this week until at least 2025. The three-day action at 36 ports was nevertheless enough to cause some serious headaches.

Strike One…

The effects of the work stoppage by 45,000 dockworkers — the first such strike in nearly 50 years — were already adding up. In New York City ports alone, nearly 100,000 shipping containers stand waiting to be emptied, Semafor reported Wednesday. Meanwhile, as shipping companies have scrambled to redirect fleets, roughly 2,000 containers may have been dumped in places that weren’t their intended destination, such as in Canada or the Bahamas, CNBC reported. Retail giants, meanwhile, rushed to pre-ship products ahead of the strike and rerouted shipments by air or to West Coast ports, Reuters reported.

The strike, which kicked off Tuesday, could have cost the US economy $2.1 billion if it lasted a full week, according to the Anderson Economic Group. It also caused a miniature panic: retailers reported shortages of toilet paper because of course, Bloomberg noted.

The tentative deal should assuage corporate and consumer fears, for now at least:

• The ILA and USMX agreed to a 62% wage hike for dock workers over the next six years, sources told Reuters. That would bring the average wage from around $39 per hour to $63 per hour over the life of the contract; the ILA had been seeking a 77% pay raise, while USMX had previously offered a 50% bump.
• But they haven’t agreed on anything else. The tentative deal, therefore, merely extends their current contract, restarting the countdown clock for a strike to January 15, 2025. In the interim, negotiations over remaining disagreements, including the contentious issue of automation, will resume.

Primetime Players: Meanwhile, over at Amazon, it’s all business as usual. The e-commerce giant announced Thursday morning — hours before the port strikes were paused — that it plans to hire 250,000 full-time, part-time, and seasonal US workers ahead of the holidays, or exactly the same amount it hired last year. That’s likely good news for anyone worried about prolonged snarls to supply chains.