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ILA Strike – Biden Plays Union Politics Instead of Protecting U.S. Economy

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26 October 2024

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The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) went on strike today, shutting down U.S. East and Gulf Coast ports.

President Biden’s words in response to the strike are not those of a president trying to protect the U.S. economy. Rather, he chose to misconstrue the situation, appeasing the union. Apparently, he’s more concerned with not losing union votes for Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election than he is about the U.S. economy.

Betsy Klein reported in a CNN article:

“As our nation climbs out of the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, dockworkers will play an essential role in getting communities the resources they need. Now is not the time for ocean carriers to refuse to negotiate a fair wage for these essential workers while raking in record profits,” [President Biden] said, warning that his administration “will be monitoring for any price gouging activity that benefits foreign ocean carriers.”

Biden/Harris Administration — Stacks of the official portraits of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are seen at the Government Printing Office Thursday, May 13, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Carlos Fyfe). Original public domain image from Flickr

It isn’t the first problem with what the president said, but he has clearly picked a side in the negotiations. Not a good starting point if his administration is actually decides to mediate negotiations. Like the ILA, with its rhetoric, President Biden would paint employers, represented by the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), as the bad guys in the situation, apparently refusing to negotiate a fair wage for dockworkers.

However, President Biden is either deliberately choosing to misrepresent the situation or completely out of touch with it. Klein reports that Biden “called on USMX ‘to come to the table and present a fair offer’.” In reality, the ILA are the ones who cancelled negotiations in June and have since refused to come to the negotiation table.

By the ILA’s own admittance, the USMX has been repeatedly calling the union and making offers. The ILA has refused to budge on its demands, refuses to come to the negotiation table, and refused to extend the current contract to keep the ports open while the parties negotiate. The USMX reported that it moved its wage offers all the way up to a 50% increase for dockworkers over the course of a new contract.

If that’s not good enough for the union, which also wants to move backwards on the automation agreement it has with the USMX, then sit at the negotiation table and actually negotiate, which the USMX has been repeatedly asking the union to do in the lead-up to the strike.

President Biden presenting the situation as the USMX refusing to come to the negotiation table and negotiate a fair wage is disingenuous. Anyone who has actually followed the ILA contract and strike threat situation, as we’ve done here at Universal Cargo with the ILA Strike Watch 2024, can see how transparently President Biden is just appeasing the union for political reasons. When his critics complained about a lack of transparency from the Biden Administration, this is probably not the kind of transparency they had in mind.

The president also followed the sickening political axiom of never letting a disaster go to waste when he brought up Hurricane Helene. Even Klein, with her and CNN’s biases for Democrats and against Republicans, had to point out the problem with President Biden’s words about dockworkers playing an essential role in getting communities the resources they need as the nation climbs out of the aftermath of the hurricane.

Klein wrote after Biden’s quote:

However, the strike will not delay the vast majority of supplies getting to hurricane victims, because few if any relief supplies would be arriving in the hurricane-battered Southeast via ship.

What we need from the president right now is not pro-union rhetoric and either deceit or ignorantly incorrect statements about the situation. We need the president to take action to end the strike quickly and mitigate its damage to the economy.

In the months leading up to the strike, the Biden/Harris Administration appeared uninterested in what was a very probable event threatening the U.S. economy. The administration made no move to prevent the strike and no attempt to mediate negotiations, perhaps because the ILA stated all the way back in November of last year that it wouldn’t want any mediation from the Biden Administration, even if negotiations went poorly.

The Biden/Harris Administration did finally break its silence on the situation shortly before the strike date finally arrived to say it would not use the Taft-Hartley Act to end the strike and send dockworkers back to their work at the ports for a cooling off period to get supply chains back moving and protect the U.S. economy.

Then what are you going to do, Mr. President? Because right now, it seems like you’re willing to let the economy lose billions of dollars per day and risk shortages while you play politics from the ILA’s pocket. You sound like a union rep rather than a U.S. president.