New precedent established for politics to drive longshore union negotiations

Following President Joe Biden’s intervention in October to end the brief strike at East and Gulf coast ports, US longshore labor negotiations can no longer be seen through a traditional lens. The precedent now firmly established is that politics will prevail over the traditional give-and-take at the negotiating table.

A traditional lens on the current scenario, following the suspension of talks again by the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) on Wednesday, would show labor and management dug in with few evident pathways to bridge the gap and the real possibility of another strike as of Jan. 15.

Management’s fundamental view is that given minimal physical additions to US port capacity, efficiency gains through automation — starting with contractual rights — are required to move growing volumes through existing facilities. Although no current union jobs would be placed at risk, the union sees automation as a threat to its nearly 150-year-old franchise and is intent on rolling back the limited right of terminal operators to automate under the existing contract.

The union suspended further talks this week over that issue, with management, represented by the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), stating the union is intent on “restricting future use of technology that has existed in some of our ports for nearly two decades.”

But the real question is: Does it matter? Is the economic rationale for greater port efficiency relevant in terms of how decisions will get made over the coming few months? Does it matter that US ports appear nowhere in the top 50 of the Container Port Performance Index, a data set developed by the Journal of Commerce, and that costly bottlenecks are a frequent occurrence at US ports?

Conversations the Journal of Commerce has had with multiple sources close to the negotiations say with a Republican, pro-business administration coming into power on Jan. 20 and anti-union figures including Elon Musk advising President-elect Donald Trump, management may have more leverage in the negotiations than they did in October.

But sources admit the possibility cannot be ruled out that management’s position is, in fact, no stronger than it was. In other words, even as the White House changes hands, the outcome will be the same as it was in October — presidential intervention in favor of the union irrespective of the costs to the industry and the economy.

The carriers being on the losing end was precisely what happened in October. The USMX and its ocean carrier members were all but forced by the White House to agree to a 62% pay increase for dockworkers over six years in a preliminary settlement on the wage issue. The “deal” ended the strike after three days and took the issue off the table as a dangerous campaign factor for Democrats.

Little apparent leverage for management

This time, the campaign is no longer a factor, but the new administration will likely be similarly disinterested in a strike of any significant length and, it can be assumed, will get directly involved, following precedent set by a series of presidents going back to George W. Bush, who acted to end a 10-day lockout of West Coast dockworkers in 2002.

What does the incoming President-elect Trump do? Reject the views of blue-collar workers — a core Trump constituency — and a union that did him a favor during the campaign by withholding an endorsement of his opponent, as it had given to Biden in 2020?

Having met with Trump late last year, documented in a photo widely spread on social media, ILA President Harold Daggett said in a social media post that “President Trump promised to support the ILA in its opposition to automated terminals in the US,” a statement that can hardly be written off. If Trump is all too willing to raise the costs of trade via tariffs, the reasoning goes, why would he be concerned about inefficiency at ports?

That is why some close to the negotiations believe USMX will ultimately agree to the union’s demands, including agreeing to its terms on automation. The result would be avoiding a strike, or at the very least a lengthy one, and averting another White House showdown management had no chance of winning in October and could have no chance of winning in January.

“The employers in the end are likely to agree to language that effectively bans new automation for the life of the contract,” a knowledgeable source told the Journal of Commerce. “The employers will want to put this contract behind them and prioritize strategy for future negotiations in hopes of avoiding a repeat of what happened just before the presidential election.”

Ocean carriers, for whom the US is an important market, have traditionally sought to maintain a low profile, knowing they are foreign entities and politically speaking have few friends in Washington, as was seen when the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022 (OSRA-22) was signed into law over their objections.

That thinking appears to be part of the union’s calculus that, at the moment, it holds all the cards and if so, why not seize the day in seeking to not just prevent an expansion of automation, but to roll back employers’ existing automation rights?

Under that scenario, USMX would live to fight another day and likely take the next few years to re-tool in a bid to fare better in future negotiations.

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