America's Talking - Longshoremen end port strike after reaching potential deal

Episode Date: October 5, 2024

Nearly 50,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association will return to work after the port workers' union reached a tentative contract agreement with the United States Maritime Alliance. "The International Longshoremen’s Association and the United States Maritime Alliance, Ltd. have reached a tentative agreement on wages and have agreed to extend the Master Contract until January 15, 2025 to return to the bargaining table to negotiate all other outstanding issues," the two groups posted Thursday in a joint statement to Facebook. "Effective immediately, all current job actions will cease and all work covered by the Master Contract will resume." Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, chief content officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire service. We are recording this on Friday, October 4th. Last night, Thursday night, about 50,000 dock workers who work at ports on the East and Gulf Coast, tentatively agreed to a settlement for a new contract, at least for the time. being, ending what had been a three-day strike that threatened supply chains, potentially it could have led to much higher consumer costs. Joining me to discuss this is Casey Harbor, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, tell us about this tenant of agreement and what the

strike meant and could have meant. Sure. I mean, there's, it's hard to overstate the significance, both of the strike and the impact it could have had on the U.S. economy and the deal that was reached by, you know, by the parties involved. I would say that we saw that they received a tentatively a 62% pay increase, which, Dan, if you're considering any Christmas gifts for me, my birthday's coming up, 62% pay increase. I'll be, you know, humbly accept that. I think. I think.

Oh, five or six years, yeah. I mean, so it's spread out, but even still, I mean, that's over, you know, there's still more than the average workers getting to be sure. So it's a generous pay increase. Another big sticking point in this negotiation has been automation, Dan, because automation has been increasing in many of these ports, and the workers are, of course, very threatened by this. And so they want it in the deal promises, even legally binding promises,

that automation would not replace their jobs. Now, we haven't seen really the details of that part of the deal come out, but I think that's the part that's going to be worked out. The workers must have gotten at least enough concessions to feel comfortable returning to work as they did Thursday night. So automation is going to be dampened at least for the next few years, assuming that this all doesn't fall through. They pushed the new deadline for all this. The suspension goes through January, which is great news for Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running for president, of course. This October negotiations were a worst case scenario for her.

So she's got to be breathing a sigh of relief this morning. Right. So dark workers are returning to work as early as today, although some ports have said that they'll need at least 24 hours to gear up operations. So over the next couple of days, most of the ports should reopen. Of course, there are three days behind because of the three-day strike. so not sure what that's going to mean in the immediate aftermath of the tentative settlement. But they will go back to work until January 15th, assuming that they can finalize the terms of this contract.

As you mentioned, automation is a big part of it. I think they're still working out those details. They won't return to striking or whatever. But Casey, during the course of this strike, A lot of interesting information was coming out, including what dock workers currently make before they got this 60-plus percent pay raise over the six-year period. More than half, for example, as the Center Square reported, more than half of 3,700 dock workers at the Port of New York and New Jersey earn more than $150,000 in the fiscal year.

The median income across the United States is $74,000. They were making good money. Now, that did include overtime. So that was not their base wage. That included overtime. But I think most many Americans were arguing, hey, they're pretty well compensated already. Yeah, I mean, they're making that managing editor level. They've reached that new level.

But, yeah, I mean, of course, that's higher. Both of those figures are much higher than the, median salary in the U.S., which I believe is between 50 and 60,000. Of course, the cost of living is higher in the Northeast. But one thing that was not as well reported is there was kind of a wide disparity. You know, dock workers in Texas are making a lot less than some of these in the Northeast. And so they're not all making the same amount. And so these raises are going to impact them differently. But it's a powerful union, of course, as we saw, almost brought the U.S. economy to its knees.

And so when you have that amount of power, you're going to get these raises. I mean, that's what these unions can do. And they knew that now was the time to do it because Biden is, you know, self-proclaimed to most pro-union president in history. Now, whether that's really true historically, who knows, but he has been vocally pro-union. So if you're going to do a strike that shuts down the U.S. economy, you know, there were groups that I was, you know, as I was reporting on this, you know, groups that were saying that this would be worse than the COVID-19 pandemic supply chain issues. I mean, we didn't really experience

the fullness of it because it was, the strike was aborted. But if this had gone on for a few weeks, then, we're talking shortages. We're talking huge price increases like we saw during COVID and after COVID. So, I mean, like I said, it's hard to overstate how big a deal this was and could have been for the economy going into really the holiday season as well. So, you know, but Biden was the time to do it. He is the union guy. That's what he's tried to frame himself as. I have a story coming about how he has undone, you know, decades of years and years of union accountability measures. And it's just gone. You know, there's been a whole infrastructure in place to hold unions accountable for the use of taxpayer resources, for instance, and his administration totally mixed that.

And I've been, you know, reaching out to them. And it seems there's no, um, they're not going to replace it. They're not going to put those back in place. So, you know, he's the union guy. They got what they wanted. It helps you as economy. But it is a tentative deal. I just want to reemphasize that, which means it could fall through at any moment. If they catch wind or they change their mind or internally, the workers want more. That's the other side of this. It's kind of like when the president ratifies a deal, agrees to a deal, the Senate has to ratify it. These union deals can be like that. If the workers aren't happy or something comes up to make them not happy, they can still kill. it. And man, if they killed it three weeks before Election Day, they would really have

the administration right where they wanted at the bargaining table. Just briefly, Casey, in the limited time, we have left. Of course, you mentioned the supply chain issues in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, reports of people hoarding all kinds of products, including toilet paper. The same thing, I've heard, I've seen reports of the same thing happening in this past week here. Of course, toilet paper is made in the U.S. She's shipped across the country by truck, not by ship, not coming in from, you know, Europe, South America, et cetera, other trade partners with the U.S. So it was, I don't know if I want to call it amusing or not to hear those reports because it just wasn't necessary for that.

We're talking about goods that are shipped in from overseas. Well, I'll defer to your, I'll defer to your expertise on the toilet paper beat. All right. Thank you for joining us today, Casey. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.