ILA Strike Watch 2024: Will White House Stop Strike?

27 October 2024

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18 days…

The clock is ticking. With about two and a half weeks until a planned strike from the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) shuts down all the East and Gulf Coast ports of the U.S., shippers are asking whether the Biden/Harris Administration is going to do anything to stop it.

By all accounts, the ILA and their employers, represented by the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), are far apart on a contract and there are no negotiations scheduled before the ILA-given deadline for a strike.

ILA Dockworkers Prepare for Strike as Watch Counts Down

So far, the White House and its appointees have been incredibly quiet on the situation despite letters from retailers and shippers begging the Biden Administration to get the parties to the negotiating table and even filings from the ILA and USMX for federal mediation.

Politics, likely being the White House’s top consideration, makes the situation extra difficult for the Biden/Harris Administration. Major unions, like the ILA, are important support blocks for Democrats, and perhaps this administration in particular. After all, President Biden has been the self-proclaimed most pro-union president in history. Unions tend to be large funding sources for Democrat campaigns and voting blocks for politicians on that side of the aisle. However, the ILA still hasn’t given its endorsement with less than two months until the presidential election.

Pressuring the ILA into a contract it and its rank and file don’t want could hurt Harris’s presidential run. But the economy is widely reported as voters’ top concern in this election. Thus, allowing a majorly economically-damaging strike to shut down East and Gulf Coast ports, disrupting the nation’s supply chains, could be worse.

Interestingly enough, we already have something of a case study for the situation.

U.S. rail worker unions were on the verge of striking as the midterm elections approached in 2022.

The Biden Administration did step into that situation as an economically damaging rail strike was perceived to be potentially devastating for Democrats in the election. The deal the administration pressured the railroads and unions into wasn’t received particularly well by the unions. It failed a number of ratification attempts before eventually making it through for acceptance.

ILA President Harold Daggett likely took notice of those events and didn’t like them. He was vocal about his disapproval of the administration’s pressure to get a new deal reached between the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) to keep cargo moving through West Coast ports when the master contract expired on the West Coast. In fact, last November, Daggett put forward the union’s position that it did not want any mediation from the Biden Administration, even if contract negotiations went poorly.

Poorly would be an understatement in describing how negotiations have gone. In reality, negotiations haven’t gone at all since the ILA cancelled June’s contract negotiations and have refused to reschedule.

Still, we’ve seen no pressure from the White House for the two parties to come together. There was much more involvement from the Biden/Harris administration during West Coast dockworker contract negotiations.

In a Journal of Commerce (JOC) article, Mark Szakonyi compares involvement from the White House and its appointees then on the West Coast to its lack of involvement now on the East Coast:

There has been less outreach from the White House to the ILA and the employer group US Maritime Alliance (USMX) than with their West Coast counterparts during the past two bargaining cycles, according to two people familiar with negotiations. Then-Labor Secretary Marty Walsh began stressing the importance of a West Coast deal early on during visits to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in November 2021, and later the ports of Seattle and Tacoma in April 2022.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg were also involved in West Coast talks. Importantly, Walsh’s successor, Julie Su, is credited with pushing both sides to reach a tentative agreement in June 2023.

The Biden administration’s role in the West Coast negotiations didn’t go unnoticed by the ILA. President Harold Daggett told locals last November that President Joe Biden forced the ILWU’s hand in accepting a deal. That same month, Daggett met with former president Donald Trump to “hear what he had to say.”

Obviously, the Biden/Harris camp would find it a disaster if it was even perceived that they were pushing the union into their political foe’s corner. But can they afford for their considerations for union political support to allow a strike?

The economy has been poor under the Biden/Harris stewardship. No one needs reminding of the high inflation and gas prices, with out of control government spending and regulation. The only way job numbers can look good under their term is when you pretend recovered jobs from the lockdowns finally ending were new jobs happening under the administration’s leadership. But that tired spin of Bidenomics is a joke. The last thing the administration needs to see is a major hit on the economy in the month leading up to the election.

However would the current administration be desperate enough to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act to stop the strike, should it hit on October 1st as expected? That option hasn’t been used since George W. Bush had to use it to get West Coast ports moving again back in 2012. If they don’t try getting involved now, it may become Biden/Harris’s only option.

Could an East Coast Port Strike Spread to the West Coast?

Stuart Charis poses the question of whether an East Coast port strike could spread to the West Coast in the title of his FreightWaves article published yesterday.

The fear comes from the support the ILWU pledged in a letter a month ago for the ILA in its contract fight. Charis nicely pulled quotes from the letter:

“As you continue negotiating and move close to the expiration of your contract, the ILWU stands in solidarity with the ILA for a fair contract that respects dockworkers and protects our jurisdiction,” said ILWU International President Willie Adams, in a letter Aug. 16. “From coast to coast, the ILWU and the ILA remain militant and resolute in our fight against automation. We will not settle for a substandard deal that does not adequately address our concerns about the future of our workplace and the safety of our members.”

Charis’s article is a nice and short read. But ultimately, I agree with an expert he cited in the article. She argues there’s little threat of strike on the West Coast side:

“Since there is an existing contract on the West Coast, there could be perhaps a one-day stoppage, but there are no grounds based on the ILA situation on which the ILWU members can strike,” said Susan Kohn Ross, an attorney specializing in customs and trade at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP, based in Los Angeles, in an email exchange. “So, if they were to do so, I would expect the carriers would get an injunction forcing the longshore workers to go back to work, post-haste!”

I would not at all be surprised to see some slowdowns from dockworkers on the West Coast. However, organized slowdowns in support of the ILA would also be unlawful activity under the ILWU’s master contract. Thus, even those, would likely be very limited.