Port officials brace for potential strike by dockworkers along the East Coast
Authorities are gearing up as a threatened strike by dockworkers at ports along the East Coast and Gulf Coast draws closer.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is "coordinating with partners across the supply chain to prepare for any impacts" from a possible work stoppage by workers represented by the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) as they negotiate with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), a Port Authority spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch on Friday.
"We urge both sides to find common ground and keep the cargo flowing for the good of the national economy," added the spokesperson, noting that $240 billion in goods move through the two ports each year and that such trade supports more than 600,000 local jobs.
As of Monday, both sides appeared far apart, issuing conflicting statements on their willingness to negotiate.
"Despite additional attempts by USMX to engage with the ILA and resume bargaining, we have been unable to schedule a meeting," USMX state. "We want to bargain and avoid a strike, but time is running out if the ILA is unwilling to return to the table."
For its part, the union blamed the stalemate on USMX declining to offer workers an acceptable wage increase.
The ILA union walked away from the bargaining table in June, declaring that a type of automation introduced at the Port of Mobile in Alabama was in violation of the current contract.
Based in North Bergen, New Jersey, the ILA represents 85,000 workers across the East and Gulf Coasts. The union is demanding sizable wage increases for its members as well as protection from job-killing automation.
According to the union, a strike would affect ports from Maine to Texas. A stoppage could involve up to 45,000 workers at ports that account for roughly 60% of U.S. shipping traffic, leading to a major disruption of shipments, Oxford Economics said in a report.
"Even a two-week strike could disrupt supply chains until 2025," Grace Zwemmer, associate U.S. economist with Oxford, said in the report.
Key deadline looms
The ILA has threatened to strike if a new labor agreement with East Coast port terminal and shipping companies represented by the USMX is not reached by the time the current contract expires on October 1.
Although there's still time to reach an agreement, the odds of a rare strike that threatens to shut down some of the nation's busiest ports are rising.
"There will be a shutdown, assuming that there's is no intervention, at midnight on Monday the 30th," Bethann Rooney, director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the nation's second-busiest port, told a briefing earlier in the week.
Should that occur, all activity loading and unloading cargo containers and automobiles would come to a standstill, while cruise ships would continue to operate, Rooney said.
The Port Authority isn't involved in the bargaining between the ILA and USMX, bur rather leases space at the ports to shipping companies. Terminal operators and ocean carriers are "working to bring in as many ships as possible" ahead of a potential walkout, said Rooney.
Those steps include "working with truckers and the rail carriers to get as much cargo out as humanly possible, as quickly as possible," the port director said.
A race to unload
The two ports are currently unloading about 20 large container ships a week, and they expect 150,000 containers to be unloaded ahead of the strike deadline, Rooney said.
"At the same time, ocean carriers are beginning to put essentially embargoes on export cargo "so that it doesn't come into East and Gulf coast ports and then wind up sitting there," she said.
Container ships carrying imports bound for Newark and Elizabeth in New Jersey and Staten Island in New York City will end up moored at specified spots in New York Harbor or off the coast during the strike, or remain at sea until they can come in. The Coast Guard and U.S. customs and Border Protection would oversee arriving ships at the port facilities once a strike was over.
