Dockworkers' union scores big labor victory after three-day strike

Seventy-two hours after tens of thousands of members of the International Longshoremen's Association walked off their jobs on the docks from Maine to Texas they were back to work — with a 62 percent wage hike. The last time this workforce went on strike was in 1977 — and it took seven weeks to reach a settlement.

The ILA had initially pressed for a 77 percent increase in wages. Union members have a base salary of just over $80,000, but that can reach the low six figures depending on how much overtime they work. It’s dangerous work. The new wage scale puts East Coast dock workers on par with their West Coast counterparts, who inked a new contract last year.

What a difference a half-century can make. Make no mistake: This kind of win like this gives all workers, union and non-union, a critical lesson — collective action produces results.

That last dock strike, 47 years ago, came a few years before the election of Ronald Reagan, who kneecapped the American labor movement for a generation when he summarily fired thousands of striking air traffic controllers. Back then, the striking workers who complained of the crushing stress of juggling jet aircraft, with hundreds of lives at stake, wanted a four-day work week and had the audacity to complain about aging infrastructure.

Those complaints resonate with today’s air traffic controllers. As the New York Times reported late last year, the FAA has formed a panel to look “into the potential risks posed by exhaustion among air traffic controllers” who work “round-the clock schedules that have pushed them to the physical and emotional brink.”

In the 1980s, 59 percent of Americans supported Reagan's tactics in breaking the air traffic controller's union. At that time, close to 20 percent of American workers were union members. Today, just 6 percent of private sector workers are in unions while close to a third of public sector workers have representation, which nets out to roughly 10 percent of the entire U.S. workforce.

In the wake of the COVID pandemic, with the loss of thousands of essential workers, the "great resignation" that followed and a generation of ever greater wealth concentration and income disparity, some 70 percent of Americans register support for unions, the highest proportion since the 1950s.

At the same time, we are seeing an uptick in strike activity and labor organizing. In 2023, the National Labor Relations Board received 2,510 applications from workers for union representation, a 53 percent spike in applications from the previous year.

The landscape has radically shifted from when the days when Reagan, at one time the president of a Hollywood actors' union, burnished his tough-guy image by firing the air traffic controllers.

In 2023, President Joe Biden walked the picket line with striking auto workers.

In addition to the wage agreement that ended the dockworkers' strike, the ILA and the United States Maritime Alliance or USMX, which represents shippers, also agreed to extend their Master Contract until Jan. 15, 2025, giving them time to negotiate unresolved issues, including the future of automation on the docks.

USMX is a trade group that represents management and shipping companies, including global multinationals like Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk. USMX leaders had asked President Biden to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act, which would have forced the union back to work while negotiations continued. Just before the strike deadline, USMX filed an unfair labor practice charge against the ILA, requesting “injunctive relief — requiring the union to resume bargaining — so that a deal could be finalized,” as Reuters reported.

But hours after the strike began it was clear that Biden would not invoke Taft-Hartley and was firmly in the union’s corner. The ILA pledged not to impede military cargo nor extend their work stoppage to the cruise industry.

“Now is not the time for ocean carriers to refuse to negotiate a fair wage for these essential workers while raking in record profits,” Biden said in a statement from the White House. “My administration will be monitoring any price gouging activity that benefits foreign ocean carriers, including those on the USMX board.”

“Over the last week and more, I have spent hours on the phone and in meetings with the parties urging them to find a way to reach a fair contract,” said Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su. “This country’s port workers put their health and safety on the line to keep working through the pandemic so we could get the goods we needed as COVID raged and these workers will help communities recover from the devastating effects of Hurricane Helene. As these companies make billions and their CEOs bring in millions of dollars in compensation per year, they have refused to put an offer on the table that reflects workers’ sacrifice and contributions to their employer’s profits.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was recently indicted on federal corruption charges, was likely eager to seize on a different narrative. He used his weekly press conference to offer support to the strikers, telling reporters he did not want Biden to invoke Taft-Hartley.

“I’m going to stop over and see the striking workers,” Adams told reporters. “I know what it is to be on a picket line and to fight for your rights as an employee.”

In a statement, the ILA said the carriers represented by USMX "want to enjoy rich billion-dollar profits" while offering union workers "an unacceptable wage package. ... It’s disgraceful that most of these foreign-owned shipping companies are engaged in a ‘Make and Take’ operation: They want to make their billion-dollar profits at United States ports, and off the backs of American ILA longshore workers, and take those earnings out of this country and into the pockets of foreign conglomerates.”

The ILA accused the shippers of “gouging” their customers, fueling inflation that hurt American consumers. “They are now charging $30,000 for a full container, a whopping increase from $6,000 per container just a few weeks ago," the union said. “It’s unheard of and they are doubling their $30,000 fee stuffing the same container from multiple shippers.”

Back in December of 2022, facing a looming railroad strike over sick time, Biden appeared to tip the scale to the railroads, signing legislation that forced that stressed workforce to take a deal rank-and-file union members had already rejected.

“It was tough for me but it was the right thing to do at the moment — save jobs, to protect millions of working families from harm and disruption and to keep the supply chains stable around the holidays,” the president said.

But during last year’s UAW strike against the "Big Three" U.S. automakers, Biden backed the union.

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“You’ve heard me say it many times, Wall Street didn’t build the country,” Biden told the strikers. “The middle class built the country, and unions built the middle class. ... You deserve what you’ve earned, and you’ve earned a hell of a lot more than you’re getting paid now.”

The UAW had a distinct PR advantage in that the general public knows who the big car manufacturers are. But trans-Atlantic container service involves a few large companies with little public-facing presence, although the deals they cut and the prices they settle on have a big impact on every consumer and every business.

In addition to wages, the issue of increasing automation at the ports still looms large and might make a long-term deal challenging. For decades now, the rail and maritime freight sectors have come under increasing pressure to automate and reduce crew requirements, often putting workers and the public at greater risk.

In the aftermath of the Norfolk Southern rail disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, which resulted in the release of a vast quantity of vinyl chloride and other highly toxic chemicals, elected officials from both parties blasted the railroad, which made for a worthy target.

Norfolk Southern, which is one of just seven remaining "Class One" railroads — there were nearly 50 of those in the 1980s — reportedly increased its shareholder payout by some 4,500 percent while cutting its railroad workforce by a third before the Ohio disaster. That was achieved by slashing costs, successfully resisting regulation and deploying more costly technology as the rail carrier made its trains longer, heavier and more profitable.

Earlier this year a ship called the Dali, a 1,000-foot floating behemoth that can hold 10,000 shipping containers but is operated by a 22-member crew, crashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing the death of six construction workers. That collapse screwed up port operations in Baltimore for months. Although the ship had a checkered safety record, the Coast Guard said it passed inspection last September. 

Roland “Rex” Rexha, secretary-treasurer of the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association, the oldest maritime trade union in the U.S., said that the Baltimore disaster highlighted the downside of not having ships escorted by tug boats until they reach the open sea — as well as the risks created by building ever larger vessels while using automation as a justification for reducing crew size, and what he called the "wide variance between U.S. maritime safety standards and the rest of the world.”