Dockworkers and port operators strike labor deal, again dodging strike
East and Gulf Coast port operators late Wednesday struck an agreement with a dockworkers union, resolving a labor dispute that had threatened to halt shipments for a second time in three months.
The two sides — the International Longshoremen's Association and the United States Maritime Alliance — announced in a joint statement Wednesday evening that they had reached a tentative deal on a new six-year contract that averts a strike that would have started Jan. 15.
"This agreement protects current ILA jobs and establishes a framework for implementing technologies that will create more jobs while modernizing East and Gulf coasts ports – making them safer and more efficient, and creating the capacity they need to keep our supply chains strong," the two parties said in their statement.
Terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed.
President Biden praised the agreement, saying in a statement Wednesday night that it "shows that labor and management can come together to benefit workers and their employers."
It comes after members of the ILA had ended a three-day walkout in October after reaching a tentative deal with the USMX that initially suspended the strike until Jan. 15. While resolving issues over pay, job security issues remained, with the union looking for guarantees that ports wouldn't use technology to replace workers.
The ILA argued against using more automation at the ports, saying the USMX was looking to cut their labor costs and boost profits.
For their part, port operators and shipping companies argued that the U.S. is falling behind automated ports like those in Dubai, Rotterdam and Singapore.
The stakes were high for the U.S. economy. Ports on the East and Gulf coasts handle more than half the nation's traffic in shipping containers, the steel boxes at the center of world trade, which carry everything from smartphones to fresh fruit to automobiles.
Under the existing contract with the Maritime Alliance, the highest-paid dockworkers making $39 an hour, or $81,000 a year. The top hourly wage would rise to more than $60 an hour under the deal tentatively struck in October.
A 2019-2020 report by the Waterfront Commission, which oversees New York Harbor, found that a third of the longshoremen based there made $200,000 or more annually including overtime pay. That didn't include workers' share of royalties on the cargo that moves through the ports, payments that can come to thousands of dollars a year.
The 10 largest U.S. ports all use some kind of automation technology to move cargo, according to a 2024 Government Accountability Office report. These include automated gates, which let trucks and containers move through cargo terminals with limited worker interaction; so-called port community systems, which are digital platforms that automatically streamline logistics and supply-chain data; and technologies used in "internet-of-things" systems, such as RFID, GPS and cameras, to operate equipment and track containers.
Only three domestic ports — Long Beach Container Terminal in Long Beach, Calif., and TraPac and APM Terminal Pier 400 in Los Angeles — are fully automated. At fully automated ports, both horizontal and vertical container movement is handled by machines. Other technologies put to use at automated ports include AI-powered sensors, so-called digital twins — or identical, digital replicas of ports — and blockchain to automate the recording of transactions and track container locations.
In 2023, the Center for Innovation in Transport in Barcelona, Spain, found "no clear evidence confirming that automated terminals outperform conventional ones," though the research firm conceded that technological advances could change things in the future.
—CBS News' Joe Enoch contributed to this report.