A major East Coast dockworkers’ union is reportedly set to resume talks with port operators next week, with some industry executives sounding alarms that another strike is likely as job automation remains a key sticking point.
Leaders from the International Longshoremen’s Association are set to resume contract negotiations on Tuesday as they stare down a Jan. 15 deadline, a source familiar with the talks told The Post.
Bloomberg earlier reported the news.
Importers and exporters are hoping to avoid a lengthy and disruptive strike that would wreak havoc across major ports on the East and Gulf coasts.
The ports handle about half of all the country’s container volumes, according to data from the American Association of Port Authorities.
Dockworkers appear steadfast in their resistance to port automation – and while they clinched a 62% raise over the next six years after a brief strike in October, pushing employers to ban automation is a different beast altogether.
Most shippers believe the strike is inevitable, a logistics company executive told The Post.
“It’s going to happen,” the exec said. “Most believe there will be a walkout.”
Shipping carriers have been preparing for the potential strike, sending extra goods to the US so companies can stockpile.
In its December newsletter, Allport Cargo Services USA, a supply chain and logistics provider, warned that importers and exporters should expect a strike starting Jan. 15, unless the government intervenes.
The strike would cost between $5 billion and $10 billion per day, according to the newsletter.
“In the short term, there will be no impact because the inventory is here,” the exec told The Post. “If this goes two to three weeks, then you will start seeing empty shelves…it would be a big problem.”
If dockworkers walk off the job again, container ships in New York and New Jersey will remain unloaded and pile up into a backlog, as the containers on these ships could not be sent back to China for more products.
Already, there has been a large increase in goods shipped to the West Coast in preparation for a strike, the exec said.
The ILA’s three-day strike in October ended in a tentative deal with ocean carriers and terminal operators for wage hikes, but left the issue of automation unresolved.
After meeting for just two days in November, the ILA and the US Maritime Alliance called off contract talks as the union refused to budge on its anti-automation stance.
The union said employers “continued pushing automation and semi-automation language in its master contract proposals that will eliminate ILA jobs.”
ILA President Harold Daggett has said he won’t accept a contract that allows for automation of any kind.
That includes semi-automated cranes, which are permitted in workers’ current contracts and already in use at some port terminals.
“Unfortunately, the ILA is insisting on an agreement that would move our industry backward by restricting future use of technology that has existed in some of our ports for nearly two decades – making it impossible to evolve to meet the nation’s future supply chain demands,” USMX said after talks fell apart in November.
President-elect Donald Trump has supported the dockworkers in their contract negotiations.
On Dec. 12, he met with Daggett and Daggett’s son, Dennis, who serves as the union’s executive vice president.
“I’ve studied automation, and know just about everything there is to know about it,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post later that day. “The amount of money saved is nowhere near the distress, hurt, and harm it causes for American Workers, in this case, our Longshoremen.”
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