Longshore strike: pressure on Biden and a temporary victory

Oaklandsocialist introduction:
The longshore is the only major industry in the United States that is still nearly 100% union. That along with the central role of international trade made the east coast/Gulf coast strike doubly important. That strike came to a sudden halt, at least until January. It concluded with a major wage increase – 62% over six years. That is significantly larger than what the shipping companies had planned to pay and possibly even more than what some members even expected. The backstory to this is how ILA president

Daggett pressured President Biden. Back in July, the ILA journal posted a photo of Daggett meeting with Trump all the way back in November of 2023. That was a warning shot to Biden that if he didn’t back the ILA, the Democrats might not get their support in the upcoming election. Sure enough, when the strike hit, the message of the Biden administration was a unified support for the workers.  The shippers had apparently been hoping that Biden would use the Taft-Hartley act to force the longshore workers back to work. He had done something similar with railroad workers, after all. Biden made it clear that that was not going to happen. According to the Washington Post, On October 3, Biden’s Chief of Staff, Jeff Zients, had had a phone call with the shippers and the union. Also on the call was White House chief economist Lael Brainard, who told management that it needed to come up with a new offer to the striking longshoremen.  Zients then wrapped up the call by telling the shippers, “I need the offer today — not tomorrow. Today. I’m going to brief the president in an hour that you believe you can get this done today.” Zients was implying that the shippers had made a new offer when, in fact, no such offer had been made at that time. There was also another message: Biden is going to support the ILA, at least verbally. Sure enough, within 24 hours, the shippers capitulated as far as wages. As for the deeper issue of automation, as we see from this report, that remains to be settled… or not.

By our reporter on an east coast city:
The port strike of 2024 was declared an October Surprise this election season, and what a surprise it was. After all, it had been only 6 years since the expiration date of the ILA-USMX Master Agreement was agreed to, and people in the industry had only been discussing its inevitability for several months.

The shock around the strike is probably due to the fact that it seems to be a requirement of mainstream journalism these days to engage in as little research as possible before commenting on a subject, especially if the subject is complicated and important. In the interest of avoiding spreading further ignorance on the topic, let’s lay out the facts of the situation at time of writing:

The ILA (the union which represents the vast majority of all Longshore workers on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States) has reached a tentative agreement with USMX (a cartel of maritime shipping corporations and ports) on containerized cargo handled within ILA jurisdiction in the United States.

This TA lasts until January 15, 2025. It has ended job actions on container terminals, though the strike continues on terminals handling roll on/roll off and break bulk cargo. The TA represents the realization of a settlement between the Union and the Cartel on the issue of the hourly wage rate, now scheduled to be a nominal increase of 62.5% over the 6 years of the agreement. Adjusting for the Federal Reserve’s projection of inflation this would mean approximately a 50% raise in real wages.

There are still outstanding issues related to the amount to be paid to the benefits package and the container royalty rate. It is the Union’s position that both should be increased, with the specific amount being kept private to negotiators. It is generally understood that USMX intends to keep both amounts pinned to inflation and nothing more.

Given the success the ILA had in securing a wage increase of such significance with only a 3-day strike, those issues are likely to be worked out to a reasonable compromise by the time the TA expires. But the larger existential question, indeed the major historical problem of the day for all workers, will be the sticking point as to whether or not the ILA goes out on strike again in January and whether or not it even exists in 10 years:

Automation
The technology now exists to fully automate most functions on a container terminal. The technology has not yet reached a point to do this work safely or efficiently, but that is not a primary concern of the logistics industry. Even if a container stack collapses on the sea every week due to shoddy lashing, or yards are congested due to the inability of a truck-based supply chain to keep up and comply with the schedule of a robotic pier, it is still the preference of the billionaires that own the ships and ports because it seizes power from the workers.

Fully automated container ports are already a reality in the Netherlands, China, Australia, and Singapore, where the technology has been in use for years. The Long Beach Container Terminal (which was automated in 2016) and the TraPac Terminal in Los Angeles (which began automation in 2014) represented the introduction of this labor process into the United States years ago.

Automation is no longer a question of the will of billionaires to implement it, but rather a question of the will of Longshoremen to resist.

It seems obvious that when dealing with corporations that literally control the entire global economy, localized struggles are likely to be ineffective in the fights to come. The split between the ILA and ILWU initially occurred over differences of opinion between Craft Unionists (who thought that each particular job on the waterfront should have its own union) and Industrial Unionists (who believed in all workers on the waterfront being in the same union). This debate is dead buried, as both Unions are now Industrial Unions.

Many Longshore workers have said since the beginning of the East Coast/ West Coast division between the ILA and ILWU that the lack of a unified organization serves the shipping cartels. With the rise of automation in the stronghold of the ILWU and an aggressive Federal intervention to stop the West Coast from striking in 2021, this argument seems to hold more water than ever before.

Beyond just an issue of unity within North America, Harold Daggett has raised the much larger and significant question of making Longshore Unions truly International. As he has often said privately and recently said publicly: solidifying the International Coalitions that link workers working at maritime ports into a real fighting force that can resist shipping corporations globally is the only realistic way forward.

It’s likely that on January 15 the members of the ILA will be faced with some sort of compromise position on the degree of automation that will be implemented over the next 6 years. This deal could be agreeable or not, but either way it will represent a transition towards a waterfront where Longshoremen are eliminated. The question at that point becomes where not just the ILA, but all workers in the global shipping industry are able to draw the line.

Call it what you like when that day comes, just please don’t call it a surprise.