A port worker from the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) holds a banner as he takes part in a strike in the Virginia International Gateway in Portsmouth, Virginia, U.S., October 1, 2024. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez
By Jo Constantz and Alicia Tang (Bloomberg) Longshoremen at docks along the US East and Gulf coasts have gone on strike for the first time since 1977 as the union takes a hardline stance against automation found at other ports around the world.
The International Longshoreman’s Association halted negotiations in June with the US Maritime Alliance, a group representing port operators and ocean carriers. The union said an Alabama port operator’s use of new gate technology that scans and processes containers without worker involvement violated their existing contract. The ILA said it wouldn’t return to the bargaining table until the “issue is resolved,” idling some 45,000 dockworkers who are also pressing for higher wages.
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The contract that the ILA agreed to in 2018 prohibits fully automated equipment at the ports and requires sign-off from the union for any new semiautomated equipment. “There’s no point trying to negotiate a new agreement with USMX when one of its major companies continues to violate our current agreement with the sole aim of eliminating ILA jobs through automation,” ILA President Harold Daggett, who serves as chief negotiator for the union, said in a statement in June.
US ports have seen technological progress over the last half-century despite union resistance. The advancements include the introduction of standardized shipping containers, which is credited with improving shipping efficiency worldwide and which Daggett says cost the union tens of thousands of jobs in the 1970s.
The union is wary of further changes, said John McCown, a shipping expert and senior fellow at the Center for Maritime Strategy. “They’ve drawn a line in the sand and aren’t going to accept anything that takes a job away.”
Ports across Europe and Asia, meanwhile, have already adopted fully automated technologies, like straddle carriers that can move and stack containers without human operators and systems that can check in cargo upon arrival.
Other major unions in the US have signaled more nuanced approaches to automation than the ILA’s stance. The latest Teamsters agreement with United Parcel Service Inc., ratified last year, requires the company to bargain with the union if it wants to introduce new technologies like drones or driverless vehicles but doesn’t bar them categorically.
The ILA’s stance is even out of step with the other major US longshoremen’s union. The International Longshore Workers Union, which represents around 20,000 West Coast dockworkers, allowed for full automation in its 2008 contract, although the issue was a sticking point in more recent negotiations.
Ken Riley, an ILA vice president based in Charleston, S.C., said the ILA supports technology that’s “helping someone be more efficient in the workplace.” But “to introduce something that’s going to eliminate our jobs, we will stand against it, if we happen to be the only one doing it.”
The ILA’s work stoppage has halted ports along the East and Gulf Coasts with the combined capacity to handle as much as half of all US shipments. If it lasts a week, the strike could cost the economy as much as $7.5 billion, according to one estimate by Oxford Economics. Other estimates put the cost as high as $5 billion a day. The potential supply chain disruption carries even more weight coming so soon before the US presidential election. Some experts say the risk to the economy is so large the federal government will likely be forced to intervene before too long.
Daggett is using the strike as leverage to make the rules around automation even more restrictive, and not just in the eastern half of the US. At a rally on the picket line on Tuesday, he signaled plans to organize port workers worldwide against automation. “When we finally do get a contract I’m going to go to Portugal with every union in the maritime to take these companies on over automation,” Daggett said through a bullhorn at the Port of New York and New Jersey. And if automation arrives at ports in Chile, “we’ll shut them down for three weeks around the world.”
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